Podcasts about 6gw

A single design error on a commercial solar project can cost $60,000 to $70,000 to fix. Scott Wyssling and Catherine Kelso of Wyssling Consulting explain what quality design actually looks like, why AI cannot replace a licensed engineer reviewing plans, and how battery integration really fits into commercial solar today.In this episode, Tim Montague sits down with Scott Wyssling, founder and principal at Wyssling Consulting, and Catherine Kelso, Director of Commercial Design and electrical engineer at the firm. Wyssling provides structural and electrical engineering and design for residential and commercial solar and storage projects across the United States. With 75 employees and an engineer-owned, engineer-led structure, the firm has built its reputation on quality control, fast turnaround, and a refusal to treat the PE seal as a formality.With the ITC safe harbor deadline pushing a construction boom through 2027, the pressure to move fast is real. Scott's point is direct: speed without engineering integrity creates liability that lands on the EPC and installer, not just the firm that signed the plans.What you'll learn in this conversation:Why a single design error on a commercial project can cost $60,000 to $70,000 to fix, and how $3,000 to $4,000 in better upfront engineering eliminates that risk entirely.How Wyssling's QAQC process actually works, including internal peer reviews and a 20% audit of already-delivered projects, and why that sets a different standard than automated or outsourced design.Why Catherine Kelso says battery integration is simpler than most EPCs expect, whether you're retrofitting storage onto an existing system or designing it in from day one, and what to watch for when choosing a manufacturer.Scott Wyssling's direct case against letting AI replace hands-on engineering review, and why a licensed PE needs eyes on the actual roof, the actual photos, and the actual electrical equipment.How 15 to 20 year old solar farms are creating a new engineering challenge as 600-volt inverters age out in a market now built around 1,000 and 1,500-volt equipment, and why this only grows from here.Quality control gets treated as optional right up until a six-figure correction lands on your desk. This episode gives you concrete criteria for telling a serious engineering partner from a shortcut operation before you sign anything.Connect with Guests Website: https://www.wysslingconsulting.com/Scott LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wyssling-5b2aa77/Catherine LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-kelso-pe-997b014a/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Battery energy storage fire safety is one of the most urgent permitting challenges facing solar and storage developers in 2026. Mike Nicholas, Energy Storage Specialist and Fire Consultant at Hiller Companies, brings a rare perspective: he built Kern County's entire BESS permitting program from scratch in 2019, when no national standards existed, and now travels the country helping developers, EPCs, and fire departments get these projects to yes.Kern County has the highest concentration of renewable energy and battery storage in California, including the largest active battery storage project in the world at roughly 3.2 GWh. Mike developed a 32-page submission guideline that standardized the permitting process and became a model other jurisdictions are now replicating. After retiring as a fire captain and assistant fire marshal in 2024, he joined Hiller, which represented about 85% of the battery storage clients that went through Kern County permitting. He now works with the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development and American Clean Power to build reference documents and videos for fire safety standardization.Here is what you will learn in this conversation about battery energy storage fire safety:Find out why the Moss Landing disaster changed everything. A fire inside an enclosed former power plant building destroyed an estimated 240 megawatts. An outdoor containerized failure, under current standards, would be contained to the enclosure of origin, a fraction of 1% of that loss. You'll understand why the industry is moving hard toward outdoor containerized deployments.Learn what UL 9540A and the new large-scale fire testing (LSFT) requirement in NFPA 855 (2026) actually require, and why they matter to first responders. You'll hear why the test forces a fully populated unit into a worst-case thermal runaway with suppression disabled, and what it means for containing a fire within the enclosure of origin.Understand what a complete Hazard Mitigation Analysis must include. Find out why a generic OEM document will not pass, and what site-specific elements, from failure modes analysis to emergency response plans for construction, commissioning, and decommissioning, are required under NFPA 855.You'll hear Mike's step-by-step account of what should happen from the moment a fire alarm sounds to the moment the incident command is established. Learn why gas meters, IR cameras, and a fire alarm annunciator panel at the static water tank are critical tools for first responders who may be 15 to 20 minutes from the battery yard inside the site.Find out what developers and EPCs get wrong in permitting. Mike explains why early engagement with the fire department, before land use approval, is not optional, and why hiring a registered design professional who knows NFPA 855 is the difference between hitting your financing deadline and chasing it.With BESS developers racing to lock in safe harbor and stay ahead of tightening FEOC and material-assistance thresholds, permitting delays and moratoria are a real threat to project timelines. Mike describes a shift already happening in California: under General Order 167-C, the California Public Utilities Commission now requires ESS operators to file emergency response plans and produce annual testing and maintenance reports, and Kern County has introduced an annual operational permit tied to emergency contact updates. These requirements are likely to spread nationally.Connect with Mike Nicholas Hiller Companies: https://hillerfire.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Last 4 days before regular tickets sell out at AI Engineer World's Fair - this is the single biggest gathering of AI Engineers, Founders, Leaders, and Researchers in the world. Attendees get >$5000 worth of sponsor credits and talk tracks are looking FANTASTIC. Join us!The AI scaling debate always focuses on the question of “how do we get more GPUs?” but the better question may be: how do we make the most of ones we already have.The fact that a frontier lab like xAI could be running at sub-10% MFU (Model FLOPs Utilization) is just a hint at what the real problem may be.For context, older frontier-scale training runs were already much higher than 10%. GPT-3 was around 21% MFU. Gopher was around 32%. Megatron-Turing NLG was around 30%. PaLM reached around 46%. And our guest Anjney says best-in-class MFU today is closer to 60–70%.It's not necessarily that xAI is uniquely incompetent (it's clear they have talented folks) but rather the priorities may be flipped in the GPU arms race.While GPU access is a bottleneck, simply increasing CapEx won't automatically translate to better models as frontier AI is increasingly a systems problem: scheduling, utilization, networking, kernels, frameworks, data pipelines, parallelism, cluster reliability, and the thousand small decisions that determine whether your theoretical FLOPs become real training progress.From building Discord's developer platform and backing frontier AI companies like Anthropic, Mistral, Black Forest Labs, and Periodic Labs to now building AMP's independent compute grid, Anjney Midha has spent years close to the real bottlenecks of AI scaling. In this episode, Anjney joins swyx at Periodic Labs to unpack why the AI race is not just about buying more GPUs, why 95% utilization would have been considered an outage at Google, and why the next era of AI infrastructure has to be more aligned, more efficient, and more responsible.We go deep on AMP's vision for a compute grid that makes FLOPs flow like megawatts, the difference between full-stack AI labs and horizontal pooling, why AI data centers need community buy-in, and how compute markets could evolve into something closer to an independent system operator. Anjney also explains why DeepMind's unpublished research points to a market failure, why end-of-life prediction remains one of the most important AI applications he has thought about for fourteen years, and why “output maxing” may become a new discipline for frontier systems.We also discuss Anthropic's culture, why “luck favors the prepared mind” in coding models, how Claude cracked coding, why too much capital too early can make AI labs fragile, what Periodic Labs is trying to do with science and superconductors, why great researchers can become great CEOs, and why Silicon Valley is both deeply missionary and deeply mercenary.We discuss:* Why 95% utilization was considered an outage at Google* Why AI infrastructure waste compounds at frontier-lab scale* Why “move fast and break things” does not work for AI data centers* How data center backlash, power grids, and community incentives shape AI scaling* AMP's vision for making FLOPs flow like megawatts* Why compute needs an independent system operator* How interruptible demand and dynamic prioritization worked inside Google* Why DeepMind research hoarding creates negative externalities* AMP's 1.2GW base-load ambition and the need for 6GW of spike capacity* Why end-of-life prediction could become one of AI's most important healthcare applications* Frontier Systems, output maxing, and full-stack alignment* Why APIs and abstraction layers become lossy as organizations scale* Superconductors, standards, and the dream of lossless systems* SF Compute, open protocols, and the future of compute marketplaces* Why non-NVIDIA chips can still benefit from NVIDIA's reference architecture* Trust boundaries and why chip startups need visibility into future model architectures* Why VCs often underestimate researchers as CEOs* Scientists as star athletes of the mind* Why great CEOs need to be confrontational up and down the stack* Why leading the frontier matters more than “winning”* How Anthropic cracked coding* Why culture is fragile, not a permanent moat* Why hardship was a feature, not a bug, for Anthropic* Why Anthropic's P0 was coding from day one* Periodic Labs, physics as the constraint, and technical reality* Silicon Valley mercenaries, missionary teams, and what happens after a breakthroughAnjney Midha* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjney* X: https://x.com/AnjneyMidhaAMP PBC* Website: https://amppublic.com/* X: https://x.com/amppublicTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:00:09 Why AI Compute Is Being Wasted00:03:17 Responsible Infrastructure and Data Center Backlash00:06:07 AMP Grid: Making FLOPs Flow Like Megawatts00:12:41 Foundry, Frontier Labs, and Research Hoarding00:14:42 Gigawatt-Scale Compute and End-of-Life Prediction00:24:08 Frontier Systems, Output Maxing, and Alignment00:27:38 Compute Markets, SF Compute, and Non-NVIDIA Chips00:32:57 Trust Boundaries, Co-Design, and Researcher CEOs00:38:17 AI Coachella and First-Principles Thinking00:42:43 Leading vs Winning in Frontier AI00:45:54 How Anthropic Cracked Coding00:48:25 Culture, Hardship, and Anthropic's P000:54:03 Periodic Labs, Physics, and Silicon Valley Mercenaries00:56:26 Rishi Valley, Singapore, and Money as a Measure00:58:47 Closing ThoughtsTranscriptIntroduction: Anjney Midha, AMP, and Compute WasteSwyx [00:00:00]: We're in Periodic Labs with Anjney Midha, CEO, founder of AMP. Welcome.Compute Utilization: Node Allocation, MFU, and AlignmentAnjney [00:00:09]: Thanks for having me. At Google, there are two types of utilization usually, right? That you're measuring in these clusters. One is node allocation, and then the other's MFU. Node utilization is usually like what percentage of cards in the data center are just, used, and that, if it's not at, 95%-Swyx [00:00:29]: There is no excuseAnjney [00:00:29]: There's no excuse, right? I think 95% at Google, which is where my co-founder, Seb, came from, he built the Borg, PBorg/GQM scheduler at Google, and there I think 95% was considered an outage, so 96% node utilization is, should be standard. And most single-tenant clusters are not running at that. So that's one. And then MFU should be, I would say the best in class today is somewhere between 60 and 70%. I think this is a leadership question, right? Fundamentally it's an alignment question, which is are the people who are funding the cluster and then deploying the cluster actually aligned? And sometimes theoretically they are, but in practice the number of people in the chain, the supply chain between, the capital and all the way to whoever's managing the cluster and then whoever's measuring what the output is, are just so many, degrees of separation away that, the, The Have you ever heard the radian metaphor, which is at the beginning of an arc, if you have two arcs that are two lines that are just off by a few degrees, that-Swyx [00:01:33]: It spreads outAnjney [00:01:34]: It spreads out, right? Or at scale. And I think what's happening is a lot of cluster implementations and infrastructure, a lot of frontier labs and other teams, that's what's happening, is they're, they initialize the plan, which is kind of like North Star with a team that wants to do good, but then they're, required to scale so fast instead of iteratively that the wastage just compounds really fast at scale. And so I think we know the answer, which is just do iterative bring ups. If you spend time with people who've been in the semiconductor industry or the DSN industry for a long time, this is not new, and I don't think AI should be an excuse. Sure. Something What is new? Okay. We have a lot of new capabilities, but that doesn't mean just abandon common sense. Common sense should always be in fashion. ? AI scaling doesn't change the in fact, if anything, AI scaling should be putting a premium on the value of common sense and infrastructure because the margin of error now is so much lower and the costs of wastage are so much higher. And the cost of wastage, by the way, is not just economic. I'm, obviously I'm, I'm an investor, or I'm an investor by background. Over the last few years now we're running an AI infrastructure business called, AMP. And I think that it's okay to say this time is different on the capabilities front. We are genuinely getting capabilities at, of the, of a kind we haven't had before. That doesn't give you an excuse to say this time is different for everything, especially infrastructure. So look, I love the hacker mindset and the hustler mindset. Now, that's great for the startup mindset, but you remember this moment where Zuck went from saying, “Move fast, break things” to, move-Responsible Infrastructure and Data Center BacklashSwyx [00:03:10]: Fast and stable infrastructureAnjney [00:03:11]: Move fast with stable infrastructure. I think now we need to move fast with, responsible infrastructure. People are going to ask where the impact is. There was a really In our class yesterday, Scott Nolan, who's the founder of General Matter, came by at Stanford to speak about energy bottlenecks. And he had a phenomenal idea. He said, “if you look at the marginal unit economics of compute per hour,” he goes, “let's call it, $4 an hour. If you're having to bring up a new data center in a new community, why not just say we're going to charge 4.50 an hour, and that marginal impact or that marginal increase, we just literally take that and give it to the local community as cash?” I can tell you as a customer of that compute, I would love that. I'd be happy to pay an additional 50 cents per hour at scale.Swyx [00:03:57]: Wow. Yeah.Anjney [00:03:58]: Because if that means the public benefit is so clear to the communities that the data centers are coming up in, I'm going to feel like that compute is much more reliable. Up to 20% of all data centers this year in the US, my understanding is are at risk.Swyx [00:04:13]: Of community backlash?Anjney [00:04:14]: Correct. Of not getting the community support they need to get brought up.Swyx [00:04:19]: Wow. That's a huge number.Anjney [00:04:20]: Yeah. Now, we, I think we should dig into what that number is. I think it's a little bit of overstated. These things can get over-reported, but it-Swyx [00:04:27]: They don't just care about jobs. They care about all the other stuff around it, right? They care about power grid, they care about environments-Anjney [00:04:33]: Power grid, permitting, and so on. And imagine I think if you said there's a new AI deal. If we're bringing up a data center in your community, we're actually going to reduce the cost of your electricity bill. Okay, now we're talking. Right? The community's going, “Okay. Now this is a deal. I feel like a partner in this.” Right now that's not happening. There will be audits, there will be investigations, and when the, when the regulators come, I don't know when it's going to be, the folks who are moving fast and breaking things in the name of AI progress better be prepared. That's certainly not how we're procuring compute. Or we're, we're trying as much as we can to work with partners who have long-term track records. Many of whom, by the way, are not, AI providers. I think this whole idea of neoclouds being somehow this new category is a lot of marketing speak. There are really good, reliable, trusted data center providers in America who've been around 20 plus years. I love those folks. They know how to Sure. Are they sponsoring happy hours at NeurIPS? No. Are they legibly listed in Build? No. Are they hanging out in my, in, situational awareness parties? No. But they're adults. I trust them.Swyx [00:05:44]: They can run LAN. They can run power.Anjney [00:05:45]: They can run LAN, power, and shell. They have credit histories. We sit down, we have a conversations. Many of them live in Silicon Valley. They've, they've had to deal with the boom and bust cycles of the internet, and I love those folks. They are stable infrastructure partners and thinkers. And I think there's a lot of short-term thinking going on in the compute layer, and it's going to catch up to us. It's not going to be good.AMP Grid: Making FLOPs Flow Like MegawattsSwyx [00:06:07]: You talk about aligning incentives, and, I would think that aligning incentives means you have the full stack in one company, which is xAI and OpenAI, right? So you as a standalone infrastructure layer, why are you somehow more aligned to your portfolio companies than people who just own the whole thing?Anjney [00:06:28]: In systems design, right, there's, there's two regimes of, architecture, right? You have integration, and then you have pooling and utilization, right? So the Or rather, the way to increase utilization often is you can do systems integration where you collapse a lot of process into one node, or you can pull out a process from a node and share that amongst various That resource amongst several different nodes. And so we see the AMP grid, which is, the, what, the system we're building here, which is basically a compute grid. We're trying to do for compute what the electric grid-Swyx [00:07:02]: PowerAnjney [00:07:02]: Yeah, what the power grid did for electricity. It-- this is a pooling and utilization layer across clouds, And so we're actually the opposite of a full stack integration like approach.Swyx [00:07:12]: Super horizontal.Anjney [00:07:13]: Where it's much more horizontal and it's, it's multi-cloud, it's multi-silicon. The goal is to try to make FLOPs flow like megawatts, and that is very hard to do today for many reasons. There's stranded pools of compute all over the place and there's no fungibility. And so right now we do it at the level of scheduling, and we often do it at the economic layer. But as we start to announce what we're working on, it's extraordinary like how many folks are coming out of the woodworks and saying, “Hey, I'm actually working on a way to make compute fungible at this part of the stack and that part of the stack.” And as a grid, we'd like all of these folks to participate on the grid. There's, people often ask me, “Andra, are you a new cloud?” And I go, “No, actually neoclouds are suppliers.” sometimes they'll ask, “Are you a venture capital firm?” I go, “No, actually they are, they are demand like sort of off-takers of the grid.” We see ourselves as what's called an independent system operator. So if you study the history of the electric grid, once it became legible to a lot of factories and industrial sort of participants that, hey, actually it turns out pooling is a good idea. We should pool our generators instead of all having a generator running at half capacity in our backyard. There was a need for an independent entity who could coordinate all these parties. Transmission line, power generation, facilities, transmission lines, factories, and that neutral coordination mechanism is very critical. In order-- If you study like the history of grids, the most enduring ones were those that never owned their own assets. They were ones that had, or often started with long-term anchors who are uncorrelated sources of demand, a steel factory, a shoe mill or whatever in a particular town who weren't competitive, where the steel factory want to spike up at night, the shoe mill wanted to spike up during the day. So then you pool and you share, right? So each of you is guaranteed some base load, but then you kind of schedule your spikes to drive a peak utilization across the town. The gold standard, so to speak, historically, has been these utility companies like PJM Interconnect in the northeast of America, where they, over many years became this what's called an ISO, an independent system operator of the grid. So that's how we see ourselves. Economically, that's what we are. From a technical perspective, we started at the scheduling layer because Seb and Mihai, who, run engineering here, built that at-Swyx [00:09:28]: Did your schedulingAnjney [00:09:28]: They did that at Google. And, -Swyx [00:09:32]: And you have infra shops from Discord as well.Anjney [00:09:35]: I have some.Swyx [00:09:35]: I don't know, I don't know if Discord is like the primary identity, but what-whatever, I'm just kind of-Anjney [00:09:39]: No, D-Discord was-Swyx [00:09:40]: Choosing a well-known name.Anjney [00:09:42]: Well, I So I was running the developer platform there. The internal infrastructure I was not responsible for. That was actually a guy by the name of Mark Smith, who was extraordinary. And yes, Discord did pool So Discord is actually a counter example. I had the chance to learn a lot about fully, full stack infra there because-Swyx [00:09:56]: It's the same thing, yeahAnjney [00:09:57]: It's the, it's the other architecture which is, Discord built its own WebRTC vo-voice and video infra. So like Discord did not use-Swyx [00:10:08]: For the calls, yeah.Anjney [00:10:09]: Yeah, did not For communication, Discord did not use third party infra. It was all built in-house. And then the way you maximize utilization was you pool demand from the world's 200 million plus monthly active gamers, right? And so that's, that's how those stacks were constructed. Again, in systems design, the two concepts that keep coming up over and over again are abstraction and composition, right? And-Swyx [00:10:31]: Bundling and unbundlingAnjney [00:10:33]: Bundling and unbundling, abstraction, composition, like verticalization and-Swyx [00:10:36]: HorizontalAnjney [00:10:36]: Horizontalization. So in that sense, AMP is an independent system operator of the grid. We pool demand, we pool supply from a number of partners we trust At about 1.3 gigawatt scale over four years. And then we pool demand from some of the world's best, research labs and so on. We're sitting at one, periodic labs who need extraordinary long-term demand. And the idea is that, each of them is guaranteed base load on the grid, but they can spike up and down flexibly on, for compute, with much shorter timelines as needed. That was roughly the design of the program I came up with at a16z called Oxygen. The same-- That was the same design of the GQM, BorgX, Borg GQM implementation at Google that Mihai and Seb had built. Which was that how do you allow, teams inside of Google, on the internal infrastructure to be guaranteed capacity, for their base workloads? But when they need to spike up on research, how could they ensure that was sufficiently there? And of course, the big innovation that was not discovered, but kind of implemented in the space, this infra space maybe three, four years ago at Google was the idea of interruptible demand, right? Where you just queue up a bunch of jobs and through this like sort of credit system, there can be a bidding mechanism.Swyx [00:11:53]: Like priorities.Anjney [00:11:54]: It's a dynamic prioritization Basically. And jobs can get interrupted based on somebody else who's saying, “what? I have 10 tokens, 10 credits I want to spend on this job.” Another like team lead, research lead is “Genie 3 or whatever is only worth five, credits, and NanoBanana2 is worth 10 credits,” and so the NanoBanana job gets priority. That's a, that's a made up example.Swyx [00:12:15]: It's very real. Brain Marketplace was real. And, we've, we've covered this on the pod with David Luan, who was-Anjney [00:12:20]: Oh, great. OkaySwyx [00:12:20]: Was there. And the criticism is that, well, actually sometimes you need central command to go all in on a thing. And actually sometimes capitalism via credits doesn't work. Not, this is not a criticism of AMP. I'm just saying, this is a thing that has been tried, internally within Google, and it led to Google missing GPT.Foundry, Frontier Labs, and Research HoardingAnjney [00:12:41]: Like, we structured ourself essentially very similarly to Google. We are structured as a holdings company. So, Alphabet holdings is Alphabet holdings, and then they've got these subsidiaries called Google and-Swyx [00:12:51]: Other betsAnjney [00:12:52]: Other bets and so on. We've got, AMP holdings, and we've got our infrastructure business, and then we've got a capital business called Foundry that incubates new frontier AI labs or invests in them as venture capital, like Periodic. We put a few hundred million dollars into Anthropic from our fund earlier this year. So wherever we feel like teams are making progress, especially researchers and so on who've pushed the frontier inside of existing labs like DeepMind, I find, there comes a point where they feel misaligned with the dictatorship of Alphabet holdings. And at that point, sometimes the dictatorship doesn't want them anymore. And they're “Thank you. You've done your job here. You've kind of helped us through the zero to one phase, and for whatever reason, we're going to deprioritize your amazing, omni model or whatever it is, and instead we're going to prioritize coding.” And, I think that's a tragedy, but I get it. They're Sergey and team are running their own business there. But that doesn't mean we the rest of us should sit around waiting for that progress to get unlocked for the rest of the world and humanity. If you think about how much extraordinary research has happened inside of DeepMind over the last 10 years, I, Demis and Sergey and those guys did such a great job. But at the end of the day, so much of that has never seen the light of day?Swyx [00:14:00]: Or they're like papers only, but they never actually shipped it to production or-Anjney [00:14:03]: What's worse is the paper is actually not even being published anymore ‘cause there's a six-month embargo inside of DeepMind, right? We've heard about this where a paper comes out, and then I think there's a six-month embargo window where if anybody on the business team says, “This could be interesting” It's embargoed for life.Swyx [00:14:18]: Exactly. So the stuff that gets published is the stuff that's not good enough.Anjney [00:14:21]: There's an adverse selection problem, basically. Yeah. At this point-Swyx [00:14:25]: It's, it's a common complaint at NeurIPS, by the way, that's “Well, why would I look at the papers that are the trash of GDM?”Anjney [00:14:31]: Again, I think it's a tragedy. I get it. They're running their business, but the rest of the I think there's negative externalities of research being hoarded, and so that'there's a market failure. And somebody needs to unlock that research, and we can't do it on our own. We only have 1.2 gigawatts of compute. That's nothing. That's about $40 billion of cloud spend. We're going to need a lot-Gigawatt-Scale Compute and End-of-Life PredictionSwyx [00:14:51]: By the way, is that's a new number. I haven't, haven't come across that gigawatt number. That's huge.Anjney [00:14:56]: Yeah. And to be clear, we haven't secured all of it. That's how much demand we have started to secure. I think publicly we haven't actually confirmed how much we have for this year. In order-Swyx [00:15:04]: Where do you want to get to?Anjney [00:15:06]: I think the steady state would be that we have a base load pool Of 1.2 gigawatts at all times Of base load capacity. For spike capacity, right now my estimate is we need roughly six gigawatts over the next four years for all our teams to feel like they were able to keep moving the frontier, whatever they're working on, whether it's, like superconductor discovery over here. There's a new investment we're working on right now, which is in the end of life prediction space in healthcare. It's extraordinary how much you can, you can give this was actually my graduate school work. I went to grad school for bioinformatics at Stanford Med. And I know we-Swyx [00:15:40]: Econ, MCS, bio.Anjney [00:15:41]: So my-- I was this really weird cat where, I was never satisfied with my major options. So at one point I was an econ major, then I was a CS major, then I was a MCS major called mathematical computational science, and they decided they were going to end that major. So I took all that coursework, and I applied it to grad school, my graduate degree in bioinformatics, which was the master's program, and then I thought I was going to do a PhD. I never ended up doing it. I dropped out and went to work at Kleiner. But I was lucky enough to apprentice with this professor at, Stanford Med. His name is Nigam Shah, and he was working on end of life prediction. Stanford is one of the only research facilities in America that has a longitudinal patient data set that's larger at scale. I think it's at least 12 million patient lives. The only larger data set is at the VA, the Veterans Affairs, of America. And to do research, like do any deep learning and so on that data set, it was called the STRIDE data set at that time, you had to be a Stanford Med School affiliate, which is why I went and enrolled in the bioinformatics department. End of deep learning was early. Nigam Shah had the visibility-- the vision to see that, you could do end of life prediction to help palliative care. In America, the, over 30% of all Medicare, Medicaid spend, at least at that time, was spent on end of life care. And what's we grew up in Asia, so we all-- Yeah, at least I won't speak for you, but I have A very different relationship with death than I find folks who grew up in America do. In America, spiritually and culturally, especially in Western societies where Christianity, the Christian tradition sort of frames death as this terminal point, there's often a judgment day and so on. The way we view death is with a finality. In Indian culture, in Hindu culture, death is one-Swyx [00:17:35]: Also, he's Buddhist as well.Anjney [00:17:36]: You're Buddhist, yeah. So it's one, it's one step in a journey of many lives, right? And so, I grew up in this city called Chennai in the south of India, and when people die, you dance on the street. There's like a procession where your body is carried to be cremated and your family, like celebrates and there's drums and so on. It's this huge thing. And, It's because the idea is that you're going to be reincarnated. You've been liberated from the responsibilities of this life, and now you're onto your next. It's a new It's like going off to a new college or whatever, right? And so it was so alien to me when I got here as an undergrad- That the medical system works backwards from that assumption that we have to view death as this terminal thing and delay it, postpone it's a bad thing. And so at the time, clinical decision support in the United States was this very primitive field. Even to this day, physicians in the United States often will tell you when you have a terminal disease, this is your, we've diagnosed you, which is great. Our ability to diagnose you is extraordinary. You have somewhere between six months to six years to live. What do you do with that information? The error bars are so high that then you In times of uncertainty, we default to culture, and when the culture is let's-- this is a bad thing, I've got to prolong my life, then you start doing things like And just to, just sort of from a systems perspective, what's going on there is Physicians often feel like they need to provide such high error bars because there's always some uncertainty in end of life diagnosis, and if you provide the wrong Diagnosis or recommendation to your patient, you can be sued for medical malpractice. And then your license can be taken away. It can be catastrophic for your career. In contrast, if in countries where that's not the case, what you often observe is that patients, physicians are quite prescriptive with their recommendation. They say, “Hey, this is your condition. The literature says that you probably have this much time on Earth left. My expert opinion is that you are an outlier or whatever.” And they try to be more prescriptive, and that empowers a patient, right? ‘Cause then a patient can say, “I trust my doctor. They said on average, I have six months to live, but if I do these things, I may have a shot because of my particular predispositions or my genetic history or whatever.” And that empowers you to go about your life in a actually more scientific way than leaning on religion, culture, spirituality, and so on. In contrast, here, because of that medical malpractice sort of thing looming over your head, a physician never gives you a clear recommendation. So instead you say, “Okay, Doc, well, let's try it all.” And then you start a whole regime of drugs and therapies, and then you often spend weeks and weeks in the hospital, and that deteriorates your quality of life. And when that deteriorates your quality of life, you instead of spending your last few days doing the things you love with your family, you're spending it on a hospital bed. And that ends up being thirty percent of Medicare and Medicaid. So it's worse for the patients. The doctors feel terrible. The American taxpayer is paying a huge amount of money. And so this is why Nigam Shah, who was this professor at Stanford, said, “Anjney, if there's “ I kind of sat down with him. I was this young, I'd, I was twenty-one, and I was “I want to work on a big problem.” He's “The big problem is end of life care.” And so we tried to do deep learning to say, to-- So we started trying to run deep learning on these tried patient data sets to say, “Could you have an AI system make a recommendation that is orders of magnitude more precise about how much time you have left once you've been diagnosed with a terminal condition than a human?” And then if we can get that precision to be high enough, then you can empower the patient. And it turns out the tech works. Like it's-- Once you get the data set, like RL works. Honestly, even regression models work. You don't need to get that fancy. At the time, we were just trying, doing like very simple neural nets.Swyx [00:21:54]: Simple solutions, yeah.Anjney [00:21:54]: Today, what we can do with RL is extraordinary. The problem remains then and now is regulatory, because you actually can't shift the burden of the wrong clinical diagnoses from the physician to the AI system. And so at that time, I got quite disillusioned ten years ago for, twelve years ago where, ‘cause I felt I just didn't have the resources to influence regulation. Today, I'm very lucky. I'm in a different place. I've, I'm a lot older, and so I've been spending a lot of time on my next incubation, which is how can we unlock the, patient empowerment by training AI models to do end of life prediction much, with much more precision and ac-Swyx [00:22:37]: Oh, wow. You're still focused on this the whole time.Anjney [00:22:40]: The-- I haven't been able to get, this out of my mind a single day for the last fourteen years. This is the hill I want, I would like to die on. There's two, I would say. What? I actually, I'd prefer not to die.Swyx [00:22:51]: Yeah, exactly.Anjney [00:22:52]: But I think two bipartisan issues, I think two issues that should be bipartisan in America are how do we empower patients to make the right clinical decisions at the end of their life, such that we're reducing the taxpayer burden with science? It's just good old science, and AI can help here. And the second is, net positive data centers, ‘cause I think that's the biggest critical bottleneck on training and good enough AI models to help people at the end of their life. So there's sort of two sides of the, of the same scaling bottleneck curve, but those two, we formed AMP as a public benefit corporation. My wife and I, who you've met, you've met Viv. Her passion is education. Her family is a long line of educators and so on, and, of physicists. And so this class is my attempt to stop being the black sheep of the family and be a, an educator. But if I'm not educating, the thing I would be doing is working, on these two problems, whether on the political spectrum or as a researcher back at, in some lab. And my hope is if anyone's listening to this podcast, if they're passionate about either of those two topics, I'd love to hear from them. We'll, we'll we can share the contact in the show notes, but, we're looking for people to join both of those missions on the, on the political side as well as on the medical side, on the research side.Frontier Systems, Output Maxing, and AlignmentSwyx [00:24:08]: You said, this is a discipline that you want to form. You call it's called variously called Frontier System. It's variously called One Person Frontier Lab. What is the ideal name or shape of this? Like the, what is the mission?Anjney [00:24:24]: Of the class?Swyx [00:24:26]: Of the discipline that you're, exploring, right? I The class is called Frontier Systems. But like for me, maybe one phrase is you're, you're just anti-waste, right? Which is wasting GPUs, wasting in human and Medicare. But is there, is there a broader theme that I'm, that maybe you can encapsulate more succinctly?Anjney [00:24:45]: Yeah. The, from an engineering perspective, it's very simple. It's output maxing. It's the, it's the department of output maxing.Swyx [00:24:51]: Making the most of what we have.Anjney [00:24:52]: Exactly. I'm a huge believer in optimal outcomes. I think both in America and other countries, we are losing our appreciation for nuance, and this is the thing of And AI is the same case, right? Oh, the bitter lesson holds. Okay, fine. But that doesn't mean you just like throw 500 GB300, 500,000 GB300s at your suboptimal model scaling and you waste a bunch of compute. It also doesn't mean that, the most optimal is to have like 50 different architectures where there isn't enough standardization. One of the reasons Anthropic has had extraordinary sort of velocity is ‘cause they picked the transform architecture and said, “This is simple. Let's double down on it,” right? And now luckily there's enough investment going to the space that we can afford other architectures, but at the time, investment was just too fragmented into other architectures, so that arguably unlocked scaling. So I think there's a philosophy. I think we all owe it to ourselves to do output maxing with a new capability called AI on a global level. I think if I was starting a new department at Stanford, depending on how fuzzy or technical I wanted to be, I'd probably call it the Department of Alignment. Like-Swyx [00:25:59]: It's an overloaded termAnjney [00:26:01]: But it is, But alignment really Is a hard problem. And I think when you unlock it, full stack alignment is super hard in any organization and in any system. Like in a, in a venture capital firm, if you can have full stack alignment between your limited partners and your, the founders who are creating the value and ultimately the public that owns the IPO stock, that is a gift that keeps giving. And when you study the history of these systems, when they start off, they usually start out small scale where the feedback loop is actually so tight that there's alignment. And then the more you try to scale, the more division of labor happens, the more specialization happens, and at each step you add abstractions. And wherever there's an API interface, there's like loss. There's communication loss. And so I think a really cool thing would be for us to figure out is there a way for us to have our cake and eat it too as an engineering discipline? Is there a way to actually scale up and scale out Without losing any alignment, without lossy transmission?Swyx [00:27:01]: You mean standards?Anjney [00:27:02]: So standards is one way. The other way is you just have net new capabilities. So like what we're trying to do here is discover new superconductors. A room temperature superconductor would be a lossless transmission mechanism for energy. We would have flying cars. We are right within a few years of having a new room temperature superconductor. So I think those are the two. You either have to standardize On protocols or API specs that allow lossless communication, or you can come up with a whole new capability that unlocks so much abundance, the standardization doesn't matter ‘cause you just unlock net new capacity. This, the, so this is what I spend my days thinking about these days.Compute Markets, SF Compute, and Non-NVIDIA ChipsSwyx [00:27:38]: No, I think every infra person at, who wants scale and wants to output max does eventually end up thinking about this. We don't have time to go into it, but we have done an episode with SF Compute-Anjney [00:27:50]: Oh, coolSwyx [00:27:50]: That is trying to standardize The futures contract for compute. I don't, I don't know how that's going by the way, but like at some point this will be public.Anjney [00:27:57]: Oh, I think Evan is awesome and SF Compute is the kind of effort that I hope we can accelerate because what often happens is these exchanges are very hard to get, they, it's hard to bootstrap them, right? Because they often require-- There's many inefficiencies between parties. There's trust boundary inefficiencies in infrastructure because you don't trust, one part of the stack doesn't trust another part of the stack to give them visibility. There's capital markets inefficiencies, there's operational efficiencies. So if you can inject like a single shock to the system of a ton of compute demand or supply, then you can accelerate, these new flywheels. And so my hope is one day, or soon, if SF Compute needs extra like has excess capacity, they just hook it up to the grid and they get flooded with demand from us. And on the other side, if they have a ton of demand but they don't have supply, they just again hook up to the grid and it's a two-way protocol where they can just hook up to our capacity. And I don't think we're too far from that. Today our working implementation of it is mostly through a group of labs, universities, and a few sort of trusted parties who are, who all feel like they're in alignment to borrow an over sort of used word. But our hope is to just have it be an open protocol that anyone can hook up to on-Swyx [00:29:20]: Hook up for demand or hook up for supply? In primarily demand, it sounds like. Like you-Anjney [00:29:25]: No, bothSwyx [00:29:26]: You would want to offer demand.Anjney [00:29:27]: Both. Yeah. Unfortunately, what's happened in the last six weeks is, we thought we'd have a bunch of excess capacity by the end of this year. It's all gone.Swyx [00:29:37]: It's exploding.Anjney [00:29:38]: It, yeah. It's all gone. And so I have, my text messages are full of friends, we know many of these people, these are founders who've raised billions of dollars in San Francisco going, “Oh, any chance you have like 50 nodes in the next few weeks?”Swyx [00:29:51]: What is the scope for, non-Nvidia, right? You have Lisa Su coming and, Rainer Pope as well. And so There is a lot of demand for, more performance Alternative architectures and all that. At the same time, this hurts your standardization.Anjney [00:30:11]: I don't think so. So actually Rainer's a great example, right? Rainer is a CEO and founder of, MatX. I actually had him by for office hours in the class earlier today, and there was an insight he brought up that I hadn't considered before, which is when they decided to pick the standard For their data center, they picked the NVIDIA reference architecture. So the MatX chips Just plug in to any site that has an NVIDIA bring up planned. And, the-Swyx [00:30:42]: It's just software then. It's, it's not the-Anjney [00:30:44]: A-Swyx [00:30:44]: Hardware.Anjney [00:30:46]: Well, from an input and IO perspective It's the same footprint as an NVIDIA rack.Swyx [00:30:52]: That makes sense.Anjney [00:30:53]: Where they have done, innovated a bunch from what I can tell is on systems co-design. Which is where a lot of the gains are to be had. And so he picked He was “Anjney, we, there's just so much work to do when you're building a new chip company.”Swyx [00:31:08]: Can't fight every front.Anjney [00:31:08]: You just can't fight on every front. So my question to him was, “Well, you're working on this new chip. Their tape-out is next year. What, who are you going to partner with to host the chips?” And he said, “Whoever will host them. That's just not, that's not my focus.” And I said, “But how did you “ you decided back to our earlier systems design question, he decided that, he didn't want to be a full, fully integrated chip provider. The bottleneck they're focused on is the logic die, and they, he feels they can crank out a ton of performance gains through co-design there. But then that means you delegate, to our question earlier, it, you he's the data center provider is a different part of the stack, and so then he's dependent on that part of the ecosystem to host his chips to get the performance gains to the customer. So now you have another abstraction, and you might have loss. So I asked him, “How do you prevent loss?” And back to your point, he said, “I just picked the NVIDIA standard ‘cause I didn't want to Like I wanted to piggyback off of an existing protocol.” And that, what's great about NVIDIA is that reference architecture is known.Swyx [00:32:15]: Open.Anjney [00:32:15]: It's open. They've published it. So Jensen's actually enabled someone like Rainer to build a chip company like MatX, and I don't see them as competitive. The compute demand is so high. Like, I don't I think NVIDIA's not able to meet the demands of production, so we just need more chips. And I think it's very smart what MatX has done, which is say, “We're just going to we're not going to innovate on the data center design ‘cause actually, thank you, Jensen, you've done all the hard work. Where we can innovate is somewhere else.” And I think that's, that's very healthy. I think that's how we unblock new bottlenecks. And my view is these, the, chip teams like MatX, who have arrived at the insight that co-design is the way, The primary bottleneck for them is trust boundary. To do co-design well, you need visibility into the next model generation as soon as possible ‘cause it takes two years to tape out. So if by the time I bring my chip to market, your model architecture's changed, I'm host. Now, when he was inside Google, he was sitting next to the Gemini team. He was on Palm or whatever.Trust Boundaries, Co-Design, and Researcher CEOsSwyx [00:33:19]: His co-founder was the, was one, was one of the Palm guys, I think.Anjney [00:33:23]: Yes. Yes, exactly. So when you're inside the trust boundary of Google, then your systems co-design loop is super tight. When you leave as a founder, one of the biggest risks you take is now you're outside the trust boundary. And so what I love doing is helping chip teams who can help us unlock more capacity for the independent ecosystem access to trust. Because when I If I've been, involved with a lab from day one, and I was lucky enough to work with Anthropic, and then I'm on the board of Mistral and helped Black Forest Labs get started. I think at this point I'm on six or seven different teams.Swyx [00:33:57]: Only six? I feel like my mental number was going to be 13, but yeah, it's-Anjney [00:34:02]: No, I go deep with one at a time.Swyx [00:34:04]: You're founding CEO of Arena.Anjney [00:34:07]: Nah, that was an, that was an-Swyx [00:34:08]: Administrative CEOAnjney [00:34:09]: It was an administrative five-month gig where Whalen and Anastasios were graduating from their PhDs, and they didn't need a product team. So I helped recruit the head of engineering product and design. But Anastasios has always been the CEO of that company. I played a pinch-hitting I'm an intern. I was CEO intern For five months. -Swyx [00:34:33]: I interviewed him, and he's he's very well-spoken. I think he's a debate, former debate, champion. But also very quantitative and mathematical, which is-Anjney [00:34:41]: He-Swyx [00:34:41]: Such a unicorn.Anjney [00:34:43]: See, what's amazing about him? If you look at his output, he's an output maxer. By the time he was graduating from his PhD, which he only graduated last year, he had published more work with a citation count than, people twice his age. But at the same time, he'd already started a project called LLM Arena that was being used by millions of people As a side project. And time and time again, what I've realized is venture capitalists suck at seeing human beings as, dynamic agents where-Swyx [00:35:14]: They want to put you in a boxAnjney [00:35:15]: They want to put you in a box.Swyx [00:35:15]: This is your thing.Anjney [00:35:16]: So the first time I got introduced to Anastasios, somebody had told me “Oh, he's amazing, but he's a researcher.” I was “what? What do you mean he's a researcher?” That's what-Swyx [00:35:28]: Like he's not a CEO, not a founder.Anjney [00:35:29]: Not a CEO, exactly. I was “Are you crazy? Do you Have you met Dario?” Dario's a scientist. He's gone from zero to, what will soon be a trillion-dollar company in four years. Being a CEO, nominally speaking, is not that hard. Being a good CEO is hard. Being a great CEO actually requires a level of performance that scientists who have already published at the top of their field have accomplished. It is super hard to be a competitive scientist. To publish in academia over the last 20, 30 years, to make it to the top of your discipline at a place like Berkeley, you are a star athlete. Like, you are an athlete of the mind, and you perform at the highest levels. And to get there, whether you're, Anastasios or Whalen at Berkeley, or you are Robin, who-Swyx [00:36:23]: BFL, yeahAnjney [00:36:24]: With Black Forest, who created Stable Diffusion, or if you're, like Guillaume at Meta, who created Llama before he started Mistral. The amount of human leadership you have to demonstrate to get the resources, like get the trust of the organization, publish it, put it up. I would just fund researchers all day Right? If who have contributed already to the field. If they've, if they've put SOTA out there, they're, they're star athletes already. If they haven't done SOTA Look, they can still be good CEOs, but then I find the failure mode is that they just don't want to be CEOs, they primarily want to publish, and that's okay, too. One of the things we do with the AMP Grid is we donate excess compute. We have two nonprofits, like university labs. We carved out like a couple thousand H100s. But I do think there's extraordinary research being done on university campuses. My father-in-law's a physicist. He's a professor. Extraordinary work in physics, and we need that. But if you want to be a CEO, what you need to be willing To do is be super confrontational, outside of science. Like within the scientific community, some of the best researchers are very confrontational about their convictions, right? This architecture is right. To be a great CEO, you basically have to be willing to be confrontational up and down the stack.Swyx [00:37:41]: To your own team.Anjney [00:37:42]: To your own team-Swyx [00:37:43]: To customersAnjney [00:37:43]: Hiring, recruiting customers. Well, I would say, Yeah, pretty much to everyone Everybody. Of course-Swyx [00:37:50]: I see, I feel a little bit of that in my own work, but yeah, I can't imagine the stakes that Dario has had to go through. It's, it's pretty insane.Anjney [00:37:56]: No, I don't think the stakes are that different From how you're feeling it, right? Stakes are personal scaling vectors, right? The stakes that seem so low to you, like having this podcast where you can talk to somebody and just have a you're an extraordinary communicator, right? Like already in this conversation, you've pulled more out of me than most people, and I've been on 12 podcasts in the last two weeks.AI Coachella and First-Principles ThinkingSwyx [00:38:17]: I think I, we've just seen each other enough that there's some base trust.Anjney [00:38:20]: There's base trust.Swyx [00:38:20]: And I think, and I know that you, that I've done my homework and like I know that trust is a big deal for you, so.Anjney [00:38:27]: I think trust is about consistency, and you and I have seen each other In the community for years, right? Like, I remember the first time we met was at NeurIPS in New Orleans. I don't know if you remember that, luncheon.Swyx [00:38:38]: Oh my God.Anjney [00:38:39]: Reiko had set up this Reiko's amazing, and he set up this luncheon and-Swyx [00:38:43]: Yeah, I was “Who's this Discord guy?” I'm “Okay.” But-Anjney [00:38:45]: No, you weren't-Swyx [00:38:46]: You were just “You made some investments.”Anjney [00:38:47]: You were much less polite. You were “Who's this VC?” You're like-Swyx [00:38:51]: No, I Was I? Oh my God.Anjney [00:38:53]: It was-Swyx [00:38:53]: I'm so sorryAnjney [00:38:53]: It was visible on your face.Swyx [00:38:54]: I'm so sorry. But you weren't, you weren't The introduction was bad. I was I didn't know who you were.Anjney [00:39:00]: The, see, this is the thing about context, right? Like, but then I think I heard your accent. And I was “Are you-”Swyx [00:39:06]: Singapore, yeahAnjney [00:39:06]: “Are you Singaporean?” And you're “Yeah.” And I said, “I went to high school, JC, in Singapore.” And then the ice broke. But This is the there are in the scientific community, sometimes the stakes are very high for people who haven't had the emotional, what is called EQ Coaching and mentorship, right? Which is like to have scientific impact, you often need to be a extraordinary emotional, like emotionally in tune person with the folks you're trying to influence. And so what comes so naturally to you is actually a super high stakes thing to other people. And so I wouldn't assume that Dario's more stressed out than you. These things are you'd be surprised how similar and small sometimes the problems are to you That some of the world's biggest, leaders are facing. And that's what I've learned from this class. The guest speakers are Sam, Satya, Jensen.Swyx [00:40:01]: AI Coachella.Anjney [00:40:02]: Yeah. It's AI Coachella, right? So we got to get all the headliners, and they're I'm very lucky that some of these people have either mentored me over the years or I've done business with them. And when you, take the performative stuff out and any assumptions you may have about these people that you read in the press or on Twitter, We're all just humans. We're all trying to get along. And what's so special about this moment is AI is forcing, like scaling, the bitter lesson is forcing a lot of people to revise their assumptions for how the world works and go back to first principles or go and educate themselves. So the kind of people I was, I won't name who this person is, but I was at an event last week in Texas and, ran to somebody who said, “Anjney, I came across the class. What do you think about real time action prediction models?” And I was, don't know how happy it made me feel when they asked me that question. I know they've done the work. They've challenged themselves. I'm, they didn't ask me, “What do you think of world models?” They said, “What do you think of n-”Swyx [00:41:04]: Real time action predictionAnjney [00:41:05]: “action, real time action prediction models?” World models, don't get me wrong, are cool and everything, but you and I both know that is a layer of abstraction that is sometimes not usefully precise enough. Right? Ours-Swyx [00:41:16]: There's like four different kinds of world models.Anjney [00:41:17]: Yes, exactly.Swyx [00:41:18]: We've done the part with general intuition, by the way, which is very focused on, -Anjney [00:41:22]: Oh, cool. Yes. I love Pim. Pim is great. And this is what I love about people who've done that level of work. They realize they're not in competition with people who the rest of the world thinks they're in competition with.Swyx [00:41:34]: Because they're not in the category, they're in the specific thing they're trying to do.Anjney [00:41:37]: They're focused on their mission, and they have a systems understanding of the bottleneck they're trying to solve. And when somebody else says, “I'm working on real time, action prediction models too,” Pim goes, “Oh, I love that person. I want, I can learn from them.” But the minute they're “Oh, that person's a world model person,” it's “like which type of world model person?” But mostly they're just trying to figure out if it's a waste of their time, because we don't have enough time. So, Pim, for example, is super, loves this other company I work with we've talked about called Black Forest Labs. And he's mentioned to me multiple times that he's so, He thinks what Flux is doing is really cool. Andy Blattman came by and spoke in the class. And what I find over and over again is for people who do the work, who can be usefully precise enough about like what is actually going on in the world of frontier research, The sense of camaraderie is still well and alive, but it gets lost sometimes when you have to like abstract The technical complexities in, business terms And then the VCs are “How are you different from that world model?” I'm going to say Where do I even start to explain this stuff? And then the misalignment creeps in.Leading vs. Winning in Frontier AISwyx [00:42:43]: This is good. Yeah, I think, people listening get a sense of, what it is like to operate at a real level, like yourself, rather than at, the journalist level, where you have to sort of put everyone in, a rough category and create a narrative of competition, and who's winning today, who's behind.Anjney [00:42:58]: It-- this idea of winning is so Weird to me.Swyx [00:43:03]: You do want to win. You want you want competitiveness.Anjney [00:43:06]: No, I think you want to lead.Swyx [00:43:07]: You want SOTA.Anjney [00:43:07]: No, I think you want to lead. Yes, so you want to push the frontier. You want to push the SOTA. You want to do something that hasn't been done before. You want to capture value, but you don't want to capture so much value that, people think you're unaligned with your mission or trying to do what's best for the world. You want to capture enough value that you can keep innovating, right? And I think that people want to lead, they don't really This idea of winning and losing, again, I love Jensen. He's a, he's a leader. The mindset that he talked about on Dwarkesh's podcast, right? He's “I didn't wake up with a loser mindset.” I think that was awesome, right? Because he's, he's an engineer. Dwarkesh has done the work. So there's at least-- even though the, to me, it was very obvious they're talking about the same thing, they just passed each other. They just had to basically, Jensen has this, five-layer cake abstraction of how the industry works. And Dwarkesh had, I think from that podcast, had more of, a pre-training, mid-training, post-training systems loop concept.Swyx [00:44:04]: It's just a factor of who he talks to, right? Again, it's very clear.Anjney [00:44:06]: It's the systems It's the abstraction, the mental models, the It's the whole-- Dude, so much of the problem in the world is reasoning by analogy. And then the assumptions that are held invisibly.Swyx [00:44:19]: Yeah, I've, I've said, this is actually the best time in human history for first principles thinkers. Because everything you think will happen is actually now coming true.Anjney [00:44:28]: Correct. And the venture capital community is, notorious for this, where people look-- In times of uncertainty, they, cling to axioms that ended up being true from the previous era, and they kind of like proclaim them with confidence as if they're truths, but they're not. And it's very important to see the distinction between a heuristic and an axiom. An axiom can be proven-Swyx [00:44:55]: Like from internal consistency point of viewAnjney [00:44:56]: With internal consistency. A heuristic is a way you kind of a shortcut. And my God, the number of people I have had to put up with over the last few years who proclaim-- use heuristics As axioms to judge people, to judge which companies are going to succeed or the number of people who are “Oh, yeah, Anthropic, they're just training models right now,” but this one continue.Swyx [00:45:22]: Because that's a B2B SaaS?Anjney [00:45:23]: Yeah, the, like Which over the fullness of time, if you squint at it, maybe. But the way you arrive there is so important that you can-- you just, you can dismiss people. Here's what happened, right? What happened is Anthropic basically achieved takeoff in October of last year. That training run-Swyx [00:45:41]: Whatever, three seven?Anjney [00:45:42]: I forget the numbers now, but whatever that checkpoint was-Swyx [00:45:45]: We saw the cognition.Anjney [00:45:46]: Yeah. Right? You probably-- The, to those of us in the community, especially once post-training was done and it was released in December-Swyx [00:45:52]: Yeah. Can I sneak a sneaky question in there? I don't know if you have a perspective, maybe you don't, I just The number one question is how did Anthropic crack coding, right? Because Claude One, Claude Two, okay, like it was part of it, but it wasn't a big deal. And the leading hypothesis, it's a lucky dice roll that was then compounded, right? Like it was like Mildly better, but then they saw it and they were “Okay, let's really invest.”How Anthropic Cracked CodingAnjney [00:46:17]: I had this very annoying teacher. I went to this boarding school called Rishi Valley in India, which is like this, bird preserve. It's like three hundred and fifty acres of bird preserve in rural India, and there was no technology for seven years. There was this teacher, I won't name them, but they would have this-- I hated it every time he said this to me. He was “Luck fa-favors the prepared mind,” which is like a common saying, but the way he delivered it, always grated me, ‘cause he was always I was always one of those kids who got, a good grade without trying very hard. ‘Cause like high middle school is not that hard if you, if you're generally, paying attention and so on. And there was this one time where I-- But then I would get an eighty percent grade, and he would keep pushing me to say “The reason you didn't get the ninety-five plus percent is because you're not that lucky.” And I would say, “What do you mean?” ‘Cause I would think that I deserved that grade, and I would sometimes argue with him. And he'd say, “You didn't have a prepared mind. If you want to get lucky again “ There was basically one time where I got like ninety-five or ninety-six on this, on this subject, and I, now that I felt entitled. I was “Okay, I'm going to keep doing this,” and I didn't. And then he was “Luck favors a prepared mind. You got lucky last time, but you got to stay prepared.” And I didn't understand what he meant. Now, as I'm older, I'm okay, these adults actually knew a thing or two. Anthropic has been the most prepared company for four years. And so then when the right, context data comes in, the right developers start sending in, the right context diffs, Sure, you could say you got lucky, but if you ask me, they're pr-pretty damn prepared with paranoia for like four years. And you have to remember, it was so hard for them to get going early on that they had to do so much more with so much less that you just have to be prepared to be so efficient.Swyx [00:48:06]: Yes. There's numbers on their burn compared to OpenAI. I've, I've written about it, but they are so much more efficient in their, in their tech stack.Anjney [00:48:14]: It's not even It's not funny.Swyx [00:48:14]: Not even close.Anjney [00:48:15]: Yeah. But it's so clear, right? Like how to output max for the world. They have been prepared, and you could call that luck, but Luck favors the prepared mind.Culture, Hardship, and Anthropic's P0Swyx [00:48:25]: This is one of those things that I was going over some of your old lectures and, you were data, people think it's a moat and actually it's culture and actually it's team Actually. And I, it's-- there's different levels of moats, and this is the ultimate one that determines everything else. Which you can then compoundAnjney [00:48:43]: You're saying culture is the ultimate moat? Yeah. But the thing about culture is it's very fragile. So moats, I don't think they're-- there's very few moats I found that are actually moats. They're-- It's, it's a nice concept, but in reality, you have to replenish your culture. Ben Horowitz was, the speaker in CS153 on Tuesday, and I asked him this question about the culture bottleneck in teams because, there are several AI teams-Swyx [00:49:09]: His book, Hard Things About Hard ThingsAnjney [00:49:11]: Hard Thing About Hard Things. But more concretely, there are so many AI labs today that have all the cash they need, they have all the compute they need, and they're still not able to ship anything SOTA. And then you start seeing people leave and so on, and my diagnosis, it's, is it's the culture. And so I asked him, Ben, they're-- He's been one of the most aggressive investors in AI labs. He goes back to this thing which resonates in my mind a lot. It-- When I used to work at a16z, I would, book a conference room, and right outside the conference room, which is closest to the toilet ‘cause it was the fastest way for me to go use the bathroom between Zoom meetings-Swyx [00:49:45]: Oh my God, I'll put maxing my toilet optimization. Okay, never mind.Anjney [00:49:48]: It was not healthy in hindsight, but maybe this is TMI. But anyway, outside that conference on the wall was this quote that was printed that said, “Culture is not a set of beliefs, it's a set of actions.” And it's by Bushido, is this, Japanese philosopher. And if you stop taking the actions that demonstrate the mission alignment to what you've said to your team and to your-- the world matters to you, then your culture starts to fray. So it's not actually a moat, I would say. It's a very brittle, fragile thing that requires daily tending to like a garden. But if you figure out the system to keep that garden tended, which I think ultimately comes down to knowing yourself ‘cause you most naturally, if you're authentic and so on, you'll naturally make trade-offs that seem effortless to you, but that reinforce your culture. And then That becomes this very hard thing for other people to catch up to. And at Anthropic, from day one, there was this mission like-- missionary like zeal and belief that, hey, these capabilities will scale. These systems are stochastic, not deterministic. There will be error bars, and until we crack interpretability, there's risk. And at some point, people will go-- stop using Claude just for coding. They'll use it in some mission-critical context where there's-- it'll throw off a bug, and then people are going to come blame them, and they want to be on the right side of history where they said, “Yes, this is a powerful technology. We think it's going to change the world, And we want to be very measured and scientific about the fact that, ‘Hey, guys, these are stats models, statistical models.' That's how statistics works.” ultimately, when you're training neural nets, it is just a statistical system. And I think that Belief that safety is important and that it might seem toy-like in the early days, and sometimes, you could say, “Anjney, they totally over-exaggerated the risk,” like two years ago when they said, “Let's not launch Claude One,” or whatever. Well, okay, maybe in hindsight, but hindsight is twenty/twenty. And at the time, they didn't know how that model would be used, and to them it felt existential if somebody came and said, “You weren't responsible. It-- This wrote a bug.” The liability associated with that is massive. So how do you prevent against that? Well, day in, day out, you say safety. And when you start deviating from that, you have the team hold you accountable, you have the world hold you accountable, and I think that becomes a moat over time. At some point, that moat will get challenged and so on, and then it become fragile. I hope it endures because that's the beauty of having founders run the show, ‘cause they can make really hard trade-offs to do mission alignment. The hardest part is in the earliest days when you don't have a group of people who are going through difficulty, stress, crisis together, then your culture doesn't get defined sharply enough, and that's what I'm worried about right now, is there's so much money going to these labs. There's no hardship. There's no-Swyx [00:52:50]: To anyone who knowsAnjney [00:52:51]: There's no to anyone who knows. And that, in hindsight, was a feature, not a bug for Anthropic. The number of people who said no, the number of people who said, “Sorry, we're all doing investors in OpenAI,” that is competitive difference. It forces you to really understand, what is the hill you want to die on at the expense of everything else. What's the P zero? And there, P zero from day one was coding. The reason, the mechanism system there was if we crack coding, Then we will crack AGI. Our mission is AGI. We want to get there safely. If we focus on codin

A US federal court just ruled the IRS acted in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner on solar and wind safe harbor rules, shaking up project timelines for developers racing toward the July 4, 2026 deadline. Meanwhile, at the Shanghai Solar Show (SNEC), energy storage claimed more floor space than solar panels for the first time, signaling a major shift in where the industry is placing its bets. Tim and John dig into safe harbor court rulings, vertical integration in US module manufacturing, battery technology milestones, and agrivoltaics at the Vatican. Viewers get first-hand reporting from the Shanghai Solar Show floor alongside detailed discussion of what these stories mean for developers, installers, and investors. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTSIRS Safe Harbor Court Ruling (PV Magazine): A US federal court in DC ruled the IRS acted arbitrarily in requiring wind and solar projects above 1.5 MW AC to meet a continuous physical work test to qualify for safe harbor. The ruling opens a potential 5% spend pathway for developers who could not meet construction requirements. Shanghai Solar Show 2026(BSKY): John Weaver returned from his first visit to the Shanghai solar show and reported that battery storage occupied more floor space than solar panels. Module efficiencies of 25% were common across exhibitors, and one solar module clocked in at 27%. BYD's 2,710 Amp-Hour Battery Cell: BYD showcased a single battery cell rated at 2,710 amp-hours, roughly double the largest cell previously available. BYD's press materials claimed a levelized cost of storage of 1.4 cents per kilowatt-hour over 10,000 cycles, compared to the 3 to 4 cent range seen elsewhere. Q Cells Full Vertical Integration in Georgia: Q Cells announced a 3-gigawatt fully vertically integrated manufacturing facility in Georgia, covering polysilicon through module assembly. The announcement means US-made solar modules are now available from a single domestic supply chain. Australia's First 8-Hour Battery, New South Wales (PV Magazine): Australia's first 8-hour battery storage system reached full operations in New South Wales, using Tesla Megapack units configured to charge at 100 MW and discharge at 50 MW. C&I Battery Storage Playbook for 2026: Tim published a story in Solar Builder on the Earn, Save, Protect framework from Intelligent Generation, a three-part guide to battery value stacking for commercial and industrial installers. (Solar Builder) Vatican Agrivoltaic Project: Pope Leo XIV established the Fratello Sole Foundation to implement an agrivoltaic installation at the Vatican, aligned with Pope Francis's 2024 sustainability directive. The project will supply power to Vatican Radio's transmission center and Vatican City State. (Vatican News)This episode is built for solar developers, commercial installers, battery storage professionals, and clean energy investors tracking policy and technology in 2026. The safe harbor ruling alone could affect capital decisions on projects above 1.5 MW AC before the July 3 deadline. Between the Shanghai show floor, the QCells factory update, and Australia's 8-hour battery milestone, this episode covers the week's most consequential moves in clean energy.  Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Solar & storage pioneers Solar Design Associates share 50 years of firsts on the Clean Power Hour. They put solar on the White House in 1979 and built the first community solar garden in America. Haskell Werlin and Steven Strong trace solar's fall from $16 to $1 per watt, explain why the battery cost curve is following the same path, and break down what the ITC-free era means for developers.Solar and storage pioneers Solar Design Associates have been designing solar energy systems since 1974, accumulating firsts from the Carter-era White House installation to the first true community solar garden in the United States. Haskell Werlin, Vice President of Business Development, and Steven Strong, Founder and President, join Tim Montague on the Clean Power Hour to trace 50 years of solar industry evolution. Solar pricing fell from $16 per watt for satellites to $1 per watt for ground mounts today, and Haskell confirms the battery cost curve is now following the same downward path, with Texas leading the country in solar and battery installations. This episode covers landmark projects, including the Bullit Center in Seattle and the Harvard community solar garden, alongside a direct assessment of what the residential ITC removal means for project economics through 2028 and beyond.Here is what you will learn from this conversation about 50 years of solar storage pioneers and the battery transition ahead:You will learn why Haskell argues Texas, not Hawaii, is now leading the country in solar and battery installations after transforming the ERCOT grid from fossil fuel dependency to firm base load power.Find out how the first true community solar garden in the US, a 542-kilowatt ground mount in Harvard, Massachusetts required a statewide home rule petition to resolve a property tax classification dispute with the local assessor.Understand how the Bullit Center in Seattle, described by the New York Times Architectural Review as the “Most sustainable commercial building in America,” achieved 100% energy offset in one of the least sunny major cities in the US.Find out how Solar Design Associates put solar on the White House under President Carter in 1979, with Steven Strong on the roof for the dedication ceremony, and were called back under President George W. Bush in 2006 to install solar on the pool and cabana, spanning two administrations and three decades. Find out how Solar Design Associates has never exceeded 20 employees in 50 years, why hiring graduates with no prior solar experience is a deliberate strategy, and what Haskell says about the companies growing fast and falling hard.Fifty years ago solar panels powered satellites because nothing else could reach them, and the technology now costs $1 per watt for ground mounts, a cost collapse driven by German feed-in tariffs, and Chinese manufacturing scale. The battery industry is now following the same path solar took from satellite technology to mass market infrastructure, with the same forces of policy, manufacturing scale, and early adopter projects already in motion. Professionals watching this episode are standing at the same inflection point the solar pioneers of 1974 stood at, with the advantage of knowing exactly how this story ends.Connect Steven Strong, Haskell Werlin Haskell Werlin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haskell-werlin-1a21383/Steven Strong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-strong-3309894/Solar Design Associates: https://solardesign.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Community microgrids and virtual power plants are two of the most misunderstood concepts in clean energy, and the gap between them is where billions of dollars in grid value are being left on the table. Craig Lewis, Founder and CEO of the Clean Coalition, returns to The Clean Power Hour to break down how community-scale microgrids and VPPs actually work, where the money is, and why the current policy window in California matters to every energy professional in the country.California's Microgrid Incentive Program funds up to $18 million per community microgrid project, covering 100% of upfront costs for front-of-meter solar and storage, grid upgrades, and interconnection. Craig explains the Clean Coalition's methodology for sizing solar and storage, calculating the minimum state of charge required for resilience, and building a value stack through wholesale markets, bilateral agreements with load-serving entities, and PURPA qualified facility status.Here is what you will learn in this conversation about community microgrids and virtual power plants:You will learn the difference between reliability and resilience, and why designing for resilience automatically gives you reliability, but not the other way around.Find out how California's Microgrid Incentive Program works, what the $18 million funding breakdown covers, and why the program is competitive enough that most applicants need deep grid analysis expertise to win.Understand the three ways to build a value stack for front-of-meter solar and storage assets: wholesale markets through CAISO, bilateral agreements with load-serving entities, and PURPA qualified facility status.You will hear why transmission costs, not energy prices, are the fastest-growing component of electricity bills in California, and how distributed energy resources close to load are the only structural fix.Learn how the Clean Coalition's VOR123 methodology tiers loads and facilities into critical, priority, and discretionary categories, and why tier-one facilities like hospitals and fire stations should be funded through public dollars.California's Microgrid Incentive Program is active and awarding projects now, with roughly 30 community microgrids expected to be funded as proof-of-concept demonstrations. At the same time, transmission costs continue rising with no policy mechanism anywhere in the US that compensates for provisioning energy resilience. For solar and storage professionals and clean energy investors, the window to build expertise in community microgrid development and front-of-meter value stacks is open today.Connect with Craig Lewis LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-lewis-81b0521/Website: https://clean-coalition.org/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Energy resilience for homeowners is the mission behind Energy Access Innovations, a multi-brand clean energy company building an end-to-end ecosystem for solar and battery storage. Nicole Tomasin, Chief Commercial Officer at EAI, joins Tim Montague to explain how the company serves the consumers the rest of the industry ignores, including DIYers and rural markets.Battery storage and solar access for homeowners is moving beyond coastal markets and high-income consumers. Energy Access Innovations has built a multi-brand portfolio covering distribution, DIY support, installation, and financing under one mission: making energy resilience affordable for every American. Nicole walks Tim through how the company's sister brands, including EG4, Signature Solar, Outback Power, Solar 76, Sun Atlas Power, and EA365, work together to serve customers that most distributors and installers turn away. The company's new XR60 battery, 60 kWh with a 16 kW inverter for under $20,000, and its EA365 prepaid lease, which returns a 30% rebate directly to homeowners, are proof that affordability and transparency are not competing goals. Here is what you will learn in this conversation about residential battery storage affordability and energy resilience:You will find out how the XR60 delivers 60 kWh of storage and a 16 kW inverter for under $20,000, why it ships as a single freestanding unit weighing 1,600 pounds, and when it arrives in market.Learn how the EA365 prepaid lease returns a 30% rebate directly to homeowners, making the residential ITC phase-out less damaging for consumers who no longer qualify for the tax credit.Understand why Energy Access Innovations built Sun Atlas Power, its own EPC company, to capture DIY customers who need installation help, and how it taps a network of 2,000 to 3,000 regional contractors already buying through Signature Solar.Find out why Tim pushed back on a California developer's claim that consumer-owned residential batteries are done, and what EAI's experience with DIY customers suggests about that prediction.You will hear why Texas surpassed California in storage deployment, how PJM grid services programs are generating returns that recover a battery investment in two to three years, and why Illinois is a priority market for EAI.The residential ITC phase-out is compressing margins across the solar industry and pushing more customers toward third-party ownership models. Illinois is incentivizing 1.8 gigawatts of distributed batteries through its clean energy incentive program, and Texas has already surpassed California in storage deployment. Contractors who are not yet offering storage are running out of time to get positioned.Connect with Nicole Tomasin, Energy Access Innovations Nicole Tomasi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-santos-tomasin/Sun Atlas Power: https://www.sunatlaspower.com/Episode 325, James Showalter: https://youtu.be/7CoJQ_lTLkU Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Silicon solar is approaching a hard physical efficiency ceiling at 30%. Perovskite tandem solar is the only proven path through it. Joel Jean, CEO of Swift Solar, explains the technology, what the Meyer Burger acquisition brings, and where tandems sit on the road to commercial scale.After seven decades, silicon solar is closing in on its physical efficiency limit, and no previous thin-film technology has been able to outperform it at competitive cost. Joel Jean, CEO and co-founder of Swift Solar, a tandem PV manufacturer based in California, joined Tim Montague on the Clean Power Hour to explain why perovskite-silicon tandems are different and how Swift is building toward commercial scale. Jean explains how Swift's approach of vertically integrating perovskite and silicon at the cell level differs from other tandem strategies, and what certifications and milestones a new module technology must clear before utility buyers and independent engineers will finance it. The conversation also covers the US position in the global solar race, perovskite degradation and lead-content concerns, and what a consistent industrial policy would mean for US solar manufacturers.Here is what you will learn in this conversation about perovskite tandem solar and the path to next-generation module efficiency:You'll understand why silicon solar cells are physically limited to around 30% efficiency, and how stacking a perovskite layer on silicon creates a two-junction cell with a path to 35-40%, with three junctions pushing toward 45% or more.Find out what Swift Solar gains from the Meyer Burger acquisition: a heterojunction product with 0.2% annual degradation, the lowest rate in the industry, and a bankable product to serve customers while the tandem completes its certification and field-proof timeline.Learn why Swift's approach of integrating perovskite and silicon at the cell level differs from other tandem strategies, including four-terminal approaches where perovskite is deposited on glass and stacked on a separate module.You'll hear Tim push back on two common concerns about perovskites: degradation and lead content. Joel explains Swift's cell-level stability progress and why perovskite panels contain less lead per square meter than the solder in a standard silicon module.With China installing solar 8.5 times faster than the US and having spent 15-20 years building a manufacturing and policy foundation, the US is still trying to rebuild. The window for US tandem solar companies to establish a position is narrowing. Swift Solar's acquisition of Meyer Burger assets is one of the few cases where a US perovskite tandem startup enters the market with a proven, bankable product already generating field data, rather than waiting years for the tandem to reach certification. For solar professionals evaluating next-generation module technology and investors tracking the US manufacturing pipeline, this conversation gives a clear picture of where tandem technology stands today and what the next two to three years need to deliver.Connect with Joel Jean, Swift Solar LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeljean/Swift Solar: https://www.swiftsolar.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

A new report from Clean Energy Associates found that some solar module factories in their first year of production are hitting yield rates as low as 30%. That means 70% of modules coming off certain lines require rework before they ship. The finding applies directly to US manufacturers, most of which are still in early ramp-up stages. In this week's Clean Power Hour Live, Tim Montague and John Weaver break down what the report means for solar developers sourcing modules right now, why newer factories in the US face the same challenges previously seen in India and Vietnam, and what due diligence steps developers should be taking before modules arrive on site. They also cover grid-forming battery validation, island microgrids, and a $14 billion Chinese renewable energy investment in Ethiopia.This episode covers battery storage technology, solar panel manufacturing quality, island microgrids, and large-scale renewable energy investment in Africa. These are the stories Tim and John break down this week:US solar panel manufacturers are struggling with soldering quality during factory ramp-up. A report from Clean Energy Associates (CEA) shows yield rates as low as 30% in early production years, meaning 70% of modules require rework. (PV Magazine)Sungrow completed what Renewable Energy Magazine calls the world's first large-scale grid-forming battery validation, passing 14 unique fault and blackout scenarios. (Renewable Energy Magazine)Sydney-based Smart Commercial Energy is developing an 18 MW solar and 40 MWh battery microgrid for Nauru, the smallest island nation in the world. The project replaces diesel generation in a location where microgrid electricity costs an estimated $0.40 per kilowatt hour. (PV Magazine)Africa's telecom sector is moving away from diesel at scale, with one company spending hundreds of millions in Kenya alone. Solar and battery payback periods for cell tower conversions run approximately two years. (My Panhandle)China's Ming Yang secured a $14.1 billion deal to develop 2.8 GW of solar and 5.5 GW of wind in Ethiopia, alongside wind turbine and transmission gear manufacturing and green ammonia production. (PV Tech)Gotion unveiled a 5 MW, 18.8 MWh enclosed battery energy storage system, first shown at SNEC 2025. John notes this is larger than any containerized battery he had tracked previously, with BYD previously holding the record at 16 to 18 MWh. (PV Magazine)John Weaver previewed his own 1.8 MW rooftop solar project in Massachusetts, structured as an alternative on-bill credit agreement with Eversource for a fixed 20-year contract. (BSKY)Solar professionals, project developers, and clean energy investors will find this episode directly useful. The topics Tim and John cover, from US manufacturing quality to grid-forming battery validation to Africa's energy buildout, reflect decisions the industry is making right now. The Strait of Hormuz situation adds urgency to the energy transition conversation, and this episode puts all of it in context.  Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Community microgrids are functionally illegal in most of the United States, yet climate-driven outages are getting worse. Cameron Brooks of Think Microgrid explains why wires laws block resilient grid solutions and what it costs us to keep burying lines instead.Burying power lines costs $4 million per mile in Colorado and up to $9 million per mile in California. That means every 20 to 25 feet of buried line costs as much as it would take to equip a home with a full battery backup system capable of riding through a 48-hour outage. Cameron Brooks, founder of Think Microgrid and E9 Insights, joins host Tim Montague to explain why that staggering opportunity cost keeps getting overlooked. This episode tackles the regulatory barriers that keep community microgrids illegal in most US territories, the structural incentives inside the utility model that favor capital investment over cost-effective distributed solutions, and the specific state-level reforms beginning to create new openings.Here is what you will learn in this conversation:You will understand why community microgrids are functionally illegal in most US states. Find out why burying power lines is an incomplete strategy for wildfire risk.You will learn how the utility cost-plus regulatory model actively works against distributed energy. Find out what a microgrid actually is and why energy storage changes everything. Cameron defines the three qualities of a true microgrid.Understand what early policy wins look like at the state level. From Ann Arbor's supplemental energy utility to Maine's wires law exemptions and Colorado becoming the fourth state to authorize plug-in solar.The combination of rising power prices, extreme weather, and growing electricity demand from data centers and transportation electrification is putting real pressure on the centralized grid model. States like Utah, Maine, and Colorado are already writing new rules.Connect with Cameron Brooks, Think Microgrid Cameron Brooks: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-brooks-/Website: https://www.thinkmicrogrid.org/Tracker: tracker.thinkmicrogrid.org Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

American solar manufacturing is getting a reboot. Dean Solon, founder of Create Energy and formerly of Shoals Technologies, sold 1 GW of product in Q1 of this year alone. In this episode, he walks Tim Montague through his vertically integrated factory in Portland, Tennessee, and names exactly why utility-scale solar equipment is quietly failing at scale. American solar manufacturing has a reliability problem, and the utilities and independent power producers who own these fields for 30 to 50 years are the ones absorbing the cost. Dean Solon, founder of Create Energy and the man who built and took Shoals Technologies public on the NASDAQ in 2021, has spent three years building a vertically integrated solar manufacturing operation in Portland, Tennessee, to address this directly. Create sold 1 gigawatt of product in Q1 of this year, with Q2 expected to double that output. Host Tim Montague tours the Create Energy factory floor and draws out exactly what full-stack, American-made solar hardware looks like in practice. Here is what you will learn from this conversation:You'll hear Dean Solon explain why module warranties are misleading and why EPC economics push toward equipment designed to last only past the two-year mark, leaving utilities and IPPs exposed for the decades of ownership ahead.Find out how Create Energy's OnTrack system uses one common control board across trackers, E-boss units, weather stations, and inverters, giving asset owners a single view of every row in a solar field with no separate pony panel required.Learn why Create offers a 10-year bumper-to-bumper warranty on its full product stack, and what Solon means when he says he eliminated failure modes rather than reduced them.Understand how automated, electric vegetation control cuts solar O&M costs in half, and why long-term asset owners should treat this as a budget line item, not a feature.For any asset owner weighing supply chain decisions in 2025, this conversation is a direct look at what the American manufacturing alternative looks like on the ground. Connect with Dean Solon and Create LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dean-solon-b8876649/Website: https://www.create.energy/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Solar racking is one of the lowest-cost line items on a DG project and one of the highest-risk failure points. Kyle Sinclair, Co-founder and CEO of SDE (Sinclair Designs and Engineering), joins Tim Montague to explain how USA-made steel and 4-day commercial engineering turnarounds are solving the lead time and logistics failures that slow commercial solar projects. SDE produces 3 megawatts of racking in a single 8-hour shift.On this episode of the Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague speaks with Kyle about the full arc of SDE's product line, from the Skyrack 2.0 fixed-tilt ground-mount system to a new I-beam solution designed for rocky soil conditions in Texas and on the West Coast. They also cover the realities of solar carport installation, including foundation risk, soil testing, and why carport projects require a fundamentally different approach than ground mount racking.Here is what you will learn in this conversation:Learn how SDE turns around residential stamped drawing packages in 2 days and commercial packages in 4 days, and why that speed has become the deciding factor for EPCs managing safe harbor deadlines.Understand the difference between C-channel and I-beam ground mount racking, including why high refusal rates in rocky soil conditions led SDE to develop a 6x9 and 6x15 I-beam solution that Kyle says is more cost-effective than most competitors' C-channel designs.Learn what every EPC should know before pricing a solar carport installation: how soil conditions drive foundation costs from $1,500 per hole to $2,800 per hole, and why planning for worst-case geotech results protects your margin.Find out how SDE holds a 95% delivery accuracy rating using ISO 9001 quality management and Keyence scanning technology integrated into their ERP system, and why that matters when your crew is at a remote site expecting a full kit.Any EPC designing projects in the Midwest or expanding into new geographies need to hear Kyle's approach to engineering for conditions that historical data no longer predicts accurately.Connect with Kyle Sinclair, SDE Kyle LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-sinclair-b9b60a62/SDE Website: https://www.sinclair-designs.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

LG Energy Solution plans to bring over 50 gigawatt hours of annual battery manufacturing capacity online in the US by the end of 2026 across five facilities (MI, IL, AZ, OH, GA). The company also projects a 15% cost reduction on its next-generation cells by 2028. Tim Montague and John Weaver dig into that story and more in this May 1, 2026, edition of Clean Power Hour Live.Tim and John cover five stories this week, drawn from industry publications and their own active projects in the field.LG Energy Solutions is building five battery factories with a combined capacity of 50+ GWh per year, targeting completion by the end of 2026. The company projects a 15% cell cost reduction by 2028. (Energy Storage News)Tandem PV began demonstration manufacturing of a perovskite-silicon module reaching 29.7% efficiency, backed by a warranty of less than 1% annual degradation over 25 years. (Solar Power World)On April 27, Trina Solar claimed the world record for silicon solar cell efficiency at 28%. Longi broke that record the very next day. (PV Magazine)The US Department of Commerce announced preliminary anti-dumping duties of 123% on solar modules from India, 35% from Indonesia, and 22% from Laos. (PV Magazine)Republican lawmakers introduced new legislation to extend the commercial solar ITC, which currently expires at the end of 2027. Safe-harboring by July 4, 2026, extends project runway to July 3, 2030. (Solar Power World)The battery capacity numbers, perovskite efficiency milestones, and tariff developments covered here carry direct implications for procurement and project planning decisions in 2026 and beyond. Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

San Diego pays the second-highest electricity rates in the United States, trailing only Hawaii, and peak-hour pricing from 4 pm to 9 pm runs up to triple morning rates. In this episode, Tim Montague sits down with Rod Matthews, President of Brevian Energy, a North County San Diego developer focused on solar, battery storage, and community microgrids. Brevian works with Community Choice Aggregators to deliver behind-the-meter solar and storage at no upfront cost to commercial property owners. Tim and Rod cover the Clean Energy Alliance Solar Plus Battery program, a 25-year power purchase agreement with a 1% annual escalator and lease payments to the host site. Here's what you'll learn in this conversation about California microgrids and community solar:You'll learn how the Clean Energy Alliance Solar Plus Battery program gives commercial property owners with 15,000 square feet of rooftop or 25 carport spaces a 25-year power purchase agreement at a 1% annual escalator with no upfront cost. Property owners also receive lease payments escalating at 2% per year, outpacing energy cost increases.Learn about how California's 4 pm to 9 pm peak window changes the math on storage. Rates during those hours run up to triple morning rates, so dispatching from the battery during peak makes projects pencil out in SDG&E territory, the second most expensive utility market in the US behind Hawaii.Understand how a closed landfill in Chollas View, San Diego, will host 10 megawatts of solar and 40 megawatt hours of lithium iron phosphate storage to serve 25,000 homes with at least 20% utility bill savings. Local residents become co-owners through a Special Purpose Vehicle for as little as $100 per share.Learn why community buy-in determines whether brownfield and microgrid projects move forward.Energy prices are climbing as data center demand grows and natural gas prices spike on global tensions. California's duck curve makes evening storage the limiting factor for further solar adoption. This episode shows a working model for solving both problems at commercial scale and at the community level.Connect with Rod MatthewsRod Matthews: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodmatthews/Brevian Energy: https://www.brevianenergy.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Eighty-five towns across New York state sit under battery storage moratoriums right now, and two of three Westchester County towns where Joe Tassone Jr. built successful battery projects in 2020 have since banned the technology outright. In this episode, Tim Montague sits down with Joe Tassone Jr., partner at onCORE Origination, a site origination firm working in 25 states on solar, battery storage, data centers, and EV infrastructure. This episode covers the top three issues blocking battery development at the community level, why fire safety fears around lithium-ion storage miss the wider context, and what separates developers who close projects from those who waste millions.Here's what you'll learn in this conversation about battery development and site origination:You'll hear the three biggest objections communities raise against battery storage projects.Find out why 85 New York towns currently sit under battery moratoriums, and how two of three Westchester County towns where Joe built projects in 2020 have since banned storage outright.Learn why Joe argues developers should never treat zoning as black and white, even in towns with outright bans, because public utility statutes and use variances open paths to approval through the judicial process.Understand how state-level programs in Illinois, Maryland, and Connecticut remove local NIMBY obstacles.You'll get Joe's three tenets of successful development: knowing where to go through parcel acumen, committing fully to a market with a clear pipeline vision, and persisting relentlessly through headwinds.Joe's 30 years of site origination experience surfaces one clear lesson: developers who treat zoning as static codes and give up at the first denial lose tens of millions in project value every year. The industry needs to move from reactive to proactive, meeting with town and county associations before moratoriums pass instead of reacting after.Connect with Joe Tassone Jr Joe Tassone Jr. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-f-tassone-jr-a778a1190/onCORE Origination Website: https://oncoreorig.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

John Weaver calls California's daytime pricing shift the story of the year. Battery demand has pushed wholesale solar prices from negative five cents per kilowatt hour up by 4.2 cents, adding around $10,833 of revenue to solar asset owners in a single five-minute period. Tim Montague and John Weaver break down what this shift means for solar developers, plus community solar crossing 10 gigawatts, BYD's 14.5 megawatt-hour battery priced at 1.4 cents per kilowatt hour lifecycle cost, and Dean Solon's plan to build 50-year solar power plants in Tennessee.EPISODE HIGHLIGHTSCalifornia batteries reverse the duck curve pricing. John Weaver's analysis shows wholesale daytime solar prices climbed from negative five cents per kilowatt hour to negative 0.8 cents, driven by battery demand absorbing midday generation. (PV Magazine)BYD reveals a 14.5 megawatt-hour DC energy storage system with a lifecycle cost of 1.4 cents per kilowatt hour (ESS News). India research indicates 90 percent grid coverage via solar plus storage at 5.6 cents per kilowatt hour. Four point nine gigawatts of solar paired with 13.5 gigawatt hours of battery delivers one gigawatt of 24/7 load. (PV Magazine)US community solar passes 10 gigawatts despite market contraction. (PV Magazine)California Public Utilities Commission seeks 6 gigawatts of new clean power capacity, with most expected to include paired battery storage. (PV Magazine)California is giving every solar market a preview of what saturated grids look like once batteries scale. The pricing data, BYD's 1.4 cent per kWh lifecycle cost, and India's 90% grid coverage research all point in the same direction: solar plus storage economics are entering a new phase. Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

One large solar company reported less than 1% of its field employees were women. The solar industry overall sits at 25 to 30% women across all roles, but the construction side drops to an estimated 1 to 3%. Riley Neugebauer, founder of Solar for Women, joins Tim Montague on the Clean Power Hour to talk about why women are missing from solar installation and what the industry needs to do about it. Riley Neugebauer is the founder of Solar for Women, a nonprofit building a network of women in the solar trades. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTSYou will learn why girls outperform boys in STEM subjects through middle school but drop off by high school, and how socialization pushes women away from trades careers before they ever consider them.You will hear Riley describe how one employer told her she had no natural ability after a year of work, while hiring men around her for the field roles she wanted. That experience led her to start the Facebook group that became Solar for Women.Riley explains that companies need to do specific work: put women in visible roles, show diversity in marketing materials, create employee resource groups, offer mentorship, and allow schedule flexibility for parents.You will hear about organizations already training women in solar, including Grid Alternatives, Remote Energy, and the Solar Energy International (SEI) women's lab programs. Riley credits Grid Alternatives with producing many of the women she knows in the solar construction workforce.Tim and Riley discuss the broader U.S. trades shortage. The country needs a million new electricians, many are aging out, and K-12 education still steers students toward college rather than skilled trades.This episode matters because the solar industry faces a labor shortage while half the population remains almost entirely absent from its construction workforce. Riley Neugebauer and Solar for Women are working to change that by building community, advocating for workplace culture shifts, and connecting women to training resources. The opportunity is large and the barriers are solvable.Connect with Riley Neugebauer, Solar for Women LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/riley-neugebauer-5a534a5/Website: https://www.solarforwomen.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Continua lo speciale di Smart City, dedicato alla crisi energetica e alle soluzioni che abbiamo in casa ma non usiamo. Questa sera facciamo il punto sullo sviluppo dell’eolico in Italia, che negli ultimi anni non è andato bene: nel 2024 è stato installato circa mezzo GW; nel 2025 si è passati a 0.6GW. Ma siamo ancora molto al di sotto delle attese e questi ritardi ci costano cari. L’eolico è una fonte di energia elettrica tra le più economiche e offre sicurezza e sovranità energetica, ma arranca tra procedure autorizzative complicatissime e tempi di approvazione biblici. Mentre non meno di 1GW di progetti potrebbe essere sbloccato con un semplice atto amministrativo dalla Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri. Ne parliamo con Simone Togni, Presidentedi ANEV.

Solar modules once cost $8 per watt. Geoff Greenfield bought his first panels from a classified ad in Home Power magazine. Twenty-six years later, he leads an EPC division building 67 MW projects and negotiating 100 MW contracts.In this episode of The Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague sits down with Greenfield to trace the full arc of the U.S. solar industry, from off-grid battery systems with lead-acid batteries to utility-scale construction backed by a multi-billion-dollar general contractor. They cover NABCEP's role in professional standards, why U.S. residential solar costs two to three times more than in Australia or Germany, and why the industry needs to prepare for a future without tax credits.EPISODE HIGHLIGHTSStarting a solar company in 2000 meant buying used 53-watt panels from classified ads at $6 per watt. Greenfield traces how the economics shifted from pure environmental motivation to grid parity and beyond.NABCEP credentials go beyond technical competence. Organizations have lost certification over ethical violations, and state attorneys general are now pursuing solar bad actors.Panel efficiency is approaching physical limits, but economic efficiency still has room.In PJM territory, commercial battery storage pays for itself through peaking value and ancillary services, sometimes faster than solar alone. Resilience sells in residential, but the commercial case depends on grid services math.The solar tax credit is likely not returning. Companies preparing for 2028 and beyond are cutting soft costs, joining procurement cooperatives like Amicus Solar, and building business models that work without incentives.This conversation provides a 26-year field perspective on what it took to grow from a one-person off-grid installer to a utility-scale EPC, and what comes next for companies facing the same transition.Connect with Geoff Greenfield, Kokosing Geoff LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoff-greenfield-595a406/Kokosing Website: https://kokosingsolar.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

A 10-person, three-month estimating process. Compressed into 12 hours by a single AI agent. That is what Jesse Anglen, co-founder of Ruh AI, is building for construction and solar companies right now. In this episode of The Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague sits down with Anglen to break down what a digital workforce actually looks like in practice, how solar contractors and EPCs can start using agentic AI today, and what it means when AI agents take over knowledge work at scale.Episode HighlightsAnglen breaks down the three categories of AI agents and explains why most of what people call "agents" today are not actually agents at all.One construction firm with projects in the hundreds of millions of dollars had a core operational process that took 10 people three months to complete. Ruh AI turned that same process into an overnight task.Solar contractors are sitting on a lead generation opportunity that most have never considered. AI agents make it possible to act on it at scale, at almost no cost.The administrative burden of running a billion-dollar construction or solar company is staggering. Anglen explains exactly which back-office functions AI agents are already handling, and what that means for headcount.Anglen gives a clear breakdown of what it actually costs to build and run a custom AI agent, from the entry-level option any business owner can start today to the complex systems designed to replace entire departments.Anglen shares a number that reframes the entire AI conversation. It is not about chatbots or writing emails. It is about the total size of the knowledge economy and how much of it AI is already capable of doing without a human in the loop.Solar and EPC companies are already operating under margin pressure, competing on thin spreads while administrative overhead continues to grow. The tools Jesse Anglen describes are available today, at a price point that is lower than hiring a single full-time employee. The window to adopt these systems before competitors do is narrowing fast.Connect with Jesse AnglenLinked: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesseanglen/Website: https://www.ruh.ai/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

US battery manufacturing capacity is set to hit 145 gigawatt hours by the end of 2026, enough to cover 100% of domestic grid storage demand. Tim Montague and John Weaver break down this milestone and seven more stories on this Clean Power Hour Live.This live episode covers battery manufacturing economics, solar panel technology shifts, offshore wind project costs, global installation records, grid stability regulation, and DIY plug-in solar.EPISODE HIGHLIGHTSUS grid battery manufacturing capacity is expected to double from 70 to 145 gigawatt hours by the end of 2026. (Canary Media)Tesla officials visited Chinese equipment makers, including Maxwell Technologies, to source up to 100 gigawatts of solar manufacturing equipment. (Reuters)India deployed 49 gigawatts of solar in 2025, surpassing the US at 45 gigawatts for the first time. (PV Tech)The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind facility, an $11.5 billion project, delivered its first power to the grid. (Riviera)GCL OptoElectronics secured China's first commercial perovskite silicon tandem PV module order at 1.2 megawatts. (PV Magazine)Fraunhofer researchers found that certain solar panel cleaning agents damage anti-reflective coatings and reduce module performance by up to 5%. (PV Magazine)Battery manufacturing economics, tariff math, and grid regulation changes are moving faster than most project timelines. If you develop, finance, or install clean energy systems, the numbers in this episode affect your next bid. Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Billion-dollar weather emergencies hit the United States every 19 days. In the 1980s, they came every 90 days. The grid is still running, but communities are paying the price when it fails. Elisa Wood, founder of Energy Changemakers and host of the Energy Changemakers podcast, joins Tim Montague on The Clean Power Hour to explain why community microgrids are the missing layer in grid resilience, where they are actually working, and what is stopping most communities from building them.In this Episode:You will learn exactly how a community microgrid differs from standard solar and storage, specifically the islanding capability that keeps critical services running when the main grid fails.You will understand why the "over the fence" rule blocks most community microgrid projects and how California is beginning to create exceptions that other states could follow.You will learn why resilience has no assigned dollar value in today's grid market, and why that missing valuation is the root cause of the community microgrid funding problem.You will hear which states are leading on community microgrid development right now and why federal funding cuts have made state and local action the only real path forward.You will learn why utilities have a structural reason to resist community microgrids and what financial incentive changes could shift that dynamic.You will take away a community engagement lesson from Cascadia Renewables in Washington State, showing that talking to residents before doing engineering studies is what determines whether a project wins local support or stalls.With federal support retreating and extreme weather intensifying, the window for state-level action on community microgrids is narrow. The case studies in this episode show that community microgrids save lives, reduce economic losses from outages, and create local energy wealth. Clean energy professionals who want to move these projects forward need to understand the regulatory barriers, the funding gaps, and the community engagement strategies that separate successful projects from stalled ones.Connect with Elisa WoodLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisawood/Website: https://energychangemakers.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Revenue from aging solar assets can now more than double through redevelopment. Matt Murphy, CEO of Flux Energy, joins Tim Montague on the Clean Power Hour to explain how. Murphy, a 20-year solar industry veteran and former Greenbacker executive, launched Flux Energy to focus on repowering and redeveloping existing solar farms, adding energy storage, renegotiating contracts, and replacing outdated panels with modern technology. His claim: deploying capital into operating assets delivers returns as good or better than building new projects from scratch. With SREC 1 and SREC 2 programs expiring in Massachusetts and solar panels from the early 2010s producing a fraction of what today's 750-watt modules deliver, the opportunity for solar asset redevelopment is growing fast.Here's what you'll learn in this conversation about repowering and redeveloping aging solar assets:Learn how Murphy's "redevelopment" strategy stacks new revenue streams on existing solar farms by adding battery storage, repowering with modern panels, and renegotiating offtake agreements.Understand the scale of the efficiency gap: panels installed a decade ago were 120-watt modules, while today's range from 600 to 800 watts. A repowered site on the same acreage produces up to four or five times the energy output.Find out why Flux Energy prefers DC-coupled battery storage.You'll hear how Murphy restores EBITDA to peak incentive levels, then connects sellers with IPP buyers in what he calls "solar house flipping."Learn why about 50% of the decommissioned panels Flux has evaluated so far have secondary market value at a few cents per watt.As the ITC phases down and a rush to complete new projects dominates industry attention, a parallel opportunity is emerging in the existing fleet. With state incentive programs expiring and aging assets underperforming, companies like Flux Energy represent a new segment of the solar industry focused on extracting maximum value from what has already been built. Connect with Matt Murphy, Flux Energy Matt's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-murphy-b900877a/Flux Energy Website: https://www.fluxenergy.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

LG Energy Solution and GM are converting their Tennessee EV battery plant to LFP production for the US grid storage market. The $70 million retooling signals a broader industry shift as EV demand in the US slows and grid storage demand accelerates. Tim Montague and John Weaver break down what this means for battery pricing, domestic manufacturing, and project developers on this week's Clean Power Hour Live. They also cover the natural gas supply disruption that sent European energy prices up 27%, balcony solar legislation advancing in 24 states, and the debut of robotic solar construction from Terabase Energy.Episode Highlights:Iran attacked a major gas facility in Qatar that produces roughly 17% of Qatar's output. John Weaver estimates this takes 3.5% of the global natural gas supply offline for at least a year. (Source)Illinois is among 24 states advancing balcony solar legislation. A Canary Media story reports that a balcony system at $3 per watt costs about $2,000 and saves consumers $400 per year. (Canary Media)LG Energy Solution and GM are converting their Ultium Cells joint venture in Tennessee from EV battery production to LFP batteries for the US grid storage market. (PV Magazine Energy Storage)Terabase, the automated solar construction platform, is ready for full market debut. The company assembles module tables on torque tubes in a covered structure, then uses robotic vehicles to transport them to field positions. (Solar Power World)  Tim has interviewed Terabase CEO Matt Campbell on the Clean Power Hour (Episode 165) Global battery storage deployment hit 17 gigawatt hours in February 2026, a 60% increase over February 2025. (Energy Storage News)  Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

FEOC compliance is the number one question solar buyers ask in 2026, and the answer determines which module manufacturers survive. In this episode, Tim Montague talks with Chris Lettman of Imperial Star, Benoy Thanjan of Reneu Energy, and the host of the Solar Maverick podcast, and Dean Solon of Create Energy at InterSolar San Diego 2026. Here's what you'll learn in this conversation:Find out how Imperial Star offers "domestic light" module configurations that let developers hit their required domestic content percentage without overpaying for content they don't need.Learn why some module manufacturers will disappear this year as FEOC compliance separates companies with verified supply chains from those without. Understand what the ITC phase-out by 2028 means for project economics and why Dean Solon says the industry needs to "break free of that pacifier." You'll hear why Dean Solon built Create as an open-architecture system where project owners control their own data without recurring software fees. Learn how battery storage is expanding beyond California and Texas into Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Benoy Thanjan notes that residential customers in Florida are now buying storage for peace of mind during blackouts, not purely for economic payback.The FEOC compliance deadline that took effect in January 2026 is reshaping the entire solar supply chain. With the ITC phasing out by 2028 and battery storage markets expanding into new states every year, solar professionals need to understand their module sourcing options, domestic content configurations, and post-incentive business models right now.Connect with the GuestChris Lettman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislettman/Benoy Thanjan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bthanjan/Deon Solon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dean-solon-b8876649/Imperial Star: https://www.imperialstar.com/Reneu Energy: https://www.reneuenergy.com/Create Energy: https://www.create.energy/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Natural gas prices in Europe surged roughly 80% after the Iran war disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off 20% of the world's oil supply. On this episode of The Clean Power Hour Live, Tim Montague and John Weaver break down how this energy war affects electricity costs, solar economics, and your business as a clean energy professional. They cover solar's fastest growth in a decade, the new SEIA market report, Virginia's clean energy moves, deep geothermal technology, and a perovskite milestone that signals large-scale manufacturing.Episode Highlights:The Iran war has disrupted oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. Tim and John discuss how this "energy war" raises electricity costs, increases shipping expenses for solar equipment, and changes forward price curves for commercial solar proposals. (Clean Air Task Force)John reports in PV Magazine that US solar generation grew at its fastest rate in a decade. (PV Magazine)Solar and wind are set to pass nuclear as a share of global electricity generation in 2026. Combined with hydro at 14%, clean sources now supply about 44% of global electricity. (Michael Liebreich)Virginia's new Democratic governor moved the state back into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which funds renewable energy certificates worth 3 to 4 cents per kWh. (Politico Pro)Quaise Energy raised $200 million to develop a super-hot geothermal power plant in Oregon. (Canary Media)Maxwell Equipment achieved 32.5% efficiency in a perovskite/HJT tandem solar cell. (PV Tech)If you sell, finance, or develop solar projects, this episode gives you the numbers and context to update your proposals and conversations with clients. Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Third-party testing shows robotic solar panel installation reduces micro cracks and defects by 16 to 20%. In this episode, Tim Montague sits down with Jay Wong, CEO of Luminous Robotics, and Andy Klump, longtime solar industry advisor, at RE+ Boston. They walk through the new Lumi 4 robot, its autonomous pallet bot companion, and how robotics-as-a-service delivers 20 to 30% cost reduction for EPCs and mechanical installers. This conversation covers where robotic solar construction stands today and why labor shortages make adoption urgent.Here's what you'll learn in this conversation about robotic solar installation and the future of utility-scale construction:Find out how the Lumi 4 robot was redesigned since last year, with a smaller form factor that fits under torque tubes and adapts to varying site conditions.Learn how Luminous Robotics pairs an autonomous pallet bot with the installation robot to separate material staging from panel placement, bringing factory-style Lean process optimization to the field.You'll hear why third-party testing by an independent engineering firm confirmed 16 to 20% fewer microcracks and defects with robotic installation compared to manual crews.Understand the cents-per-watt, robotics-as-a-service pricing model that gives customers 20 to 30% cost reduction from day one without owning or maintaining the equipment.Andy Klump explains why developers who have safe-harbored gigawatts of equipment will face a labor shortage in 2027 and 2028, and why many systems will not connect to the grid on time without large-scale robotic deployment.With a wave of safe-harbored solar projects set to break ground in the next two years, the construction workforce will not scale fast enough to meet demand. Robotic installation is moving from proof of concept to commercial deployment, and EPCs who adopt early, stand to gain a measurable cost and quality advantage on utility-scale projects.Reach Jay and Andy Here Jay Wong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaymingwong/Luminous: https://www.luminousrobotics.com/Andy Klump: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aklump/ Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Every disconnected monitoring platform in your stack is a blind spot. And every blind spot is lost revenue. On this episode of The Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague sits down with Hervé Billiet, CEO of Sunvoy and co-host of What Solar Installers Need to Know. Sunvoy is a solar fleet monitoring and customer management platform that pulls inverter data from multiple brands into a single dashboard so installers see their entire fleet in one place.Tim and Hervé cover the shift from residential to commercial solar, the growing role of batteries and VPPs, and why fleet monitoring and O&M are no longer optional for installers who want to stay competitive in 2026.Here's what you'll learn in this conversation about scaling a solar business and preparing for the C&I transition:Find out why solar systems produce less than promised, and how the industry's "no maintenance" sales pitch created a generation of neglected assets.Learn how consolidating inverter data from SMA, SolarEdge, and other platforms into one dashboard changes the way installers manage their fleet.Understand the "dead zone" between residential and commercial solar, where companies running both without dedicated teams risk breaking both pipelines.You'll hear why predictive AI in monitoring is premature for most residential installers, and why fixing offline inverters matters more right now than advanced models.Learn what a 3-year payback on C&I solar with batteries in Illinois signals about where the market is heading, and why Tim predicts VPPs will be active in 30 states within five years.With residential solar declining and battery attachment rates rising, the installers who build dedicated teams and monitoring systems now will be the ones still operating in five years.Connect with Hervé Billiet here. Sunvoy: https://sunvoy.com/Hervé Billiet: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hervebilliet/What Solar Installers Need to Know podcast: https://sunvoy.com/podcast Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Energy bills have jumped as much as 30% in the last year, and data center demand is outpacing grid growth. CPS America, with over 10 gigawatts of string inverters shipped in the US, is responding with a wave of new products: skidded string solutions, a 250kW 600V inverter platform, and fully integrated C&I battery storage with industry-leading fire safety certification. In this episode, Tim Montague sits down with six CPS America team members, including Bryan Wagner, Joe Ross, Brian Baxter, Luke Hardin, Luke Schlicte, and Andrey Malyshev, to break down what solar developers, asset owners, and installers need to know about the shift from central to string inverters and the accelerating C&I storage market.Episode HighlightsCPS America is rolling out a series of new inverter platforms, including a 250kW 600V model that Bryan Wagner expects could do more volume than all other CPS units combined. A new 200kW 480V community solar product and the 350kW with MV station round out the lineup.Skidded string combines 10 to 12 string inverters on a factory-integrated skid with a transformer and switchgear, then ships to the site. This cuts field labor on the front end and reduces O&M costs on the back end by concentrating all equipment on a single pad.CPS launched a fully integrated C&I battery storage system with inverters and batteries in one unit.The central-to-string transition is accelerating as the CapEx gap between the two approaches shrinks. String inverters reduce single points of failure, lower technician costs, and give asset owners more control over uptime and spare parts.With energy demand outpacing grid growth and battery economics improving each quarter, the team at CPS America makes a data-backed case for why commercial storage and string-inverter adoption are accelerating in 2026. CPS hosts Innovation Day in Dallas, April 22 to 24, for those who want a deeper look. Connect with the CPS Team WebsiteLinkedInRegister for the CPS Innovation Day Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

LFP battery storage pricing dropped from over $1,000 per kilowatt hour to under $100 per kilowatt hour in a few short years. That single shift is reshaping project economics across the solar and storage industry. In this episode of The Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague sits down with Wes Kennedy, a 30-year clean energy veteran. They cover DC coupling, middle market strategy, the AI-driven energy demand surge, workforce development, and what the storage ITC means in a post-solar-ITC world.Wes Kennedy leads middle market BESS deployment at QCells. He has nearly 30 years of experience in renewables. He co-founded Namaste Solar and held senior engineering and leadership roles at SMA America, Dynapower, and Blue Planet Energy. He continues to educate the next generation of installers through his "Comprehensive Solar plus Storage" curriculum on HeatSpring.Episode HighlightsLFP batteries went from over $1,000/kWh to under $100/kWh at scale in a few years. Wes traces this shift from his time at Blue Planet Energy, where lithium iron phosphate was still considered an exotic chemistry. DC coupling turns a constrained interconnection into a 24-hour revenue asset. A 1 MW grid connection, when paired with enough solar and storage on the DC side, produces a 24 MWh revenue stream for the host while remaining a 1 MW dispatchable resource from the utility's perspective.The storage ITC still exists even though solar lost its tax credit. DC-coupled projects benefit because the battery, battery inverter, transformer, skid, and cables all qualify for the ITC. QCells is launching a 1.25 MW, 5 MWh middle market skid. All components come from non-FEOC nations with at least 70% domestic content compliance, qualifying for a 40% tax credit. The biggest storage myth is a lithium shortage. Wes points to battery recycling companies like Redwood Recycling. Recycled battery volume is a richer feedstock than the richest lithium mine on the planet. You can connect with Wes Kennedy here Wes Kennedy LinkedInQcells WebsiteHeatspring Wes Kennedy Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

These massive AI deals look concerning The numbers are exciting when companies like Meta or OpenAI announce they'll be purchasing billions of dollars in chips or computing power from companies like Nvidia or AMD, but there always seems to be a catch. Most recently, Meta announced that it entered a multiyear deal with AMD to deploy up to 6 gigawatts of the company's graphics processing units for artificial intelligence data centers and includes use of AI-optimized central processing units, or CPUs. This deal comes a week after Meta committed to using millions of Nvidia's processors to power its AI expansion. While I have my concerns with all the money Meta is spending, my bigger concern with this new AMD deal is the use of stock warrants. Full details for the deal weren't announced, but we did see the deal includes a performance-based warrant for Meta to acquire 160 million AMD shares, about 10% of the company. The first tranche vests when the first 1GW of Instinct GPUs are shipped. Other tranches vest as Meta, makes purchases to 6GW. Vesting is also tied to stock price thresholds for AMD and technical and commercial milestones for Meta. AMD also struck a similar deal with OpenAI where they received warrants to acquire 160 million shares of AMD and it was tied to deployment and stock price benchmarks. The reason this is concerning is because of the potential dilution and again the circular nature of these deals. Essentially these companies are saying they will spend $30 B buying our products and we will give you $30 B in stock warrants back. Stock warrants give holders the right but not the obligation to buy or sell shares at specific strike price before an expiration date. If they are exercised, it creates new stock, which would dilute current shareholders. Based on what I have seen, the exercise price for these warrants is $0.01. Ultimately, I just don't believe this will end well for all players in this space, and I think there is a lot of money that will be lost by investors.    2025 trade deficit looks deceiving Some people are saying that the tariffs didn't work because the trade deficit in 2025 only fell to about $901.5 B from just over $903 B in 2024. However, if you break down the numbers quarter by a quarter, it tells a different story. The first three months of the year, there was a $400 billion trade deficit, but each quarter after that it began to decline. In the second quarter, it fell drastically to $180 billion. There wasn't much of a change in the third quarter with a slight drop to $175 billion and then in the fourth quarter there was a drop to $145 billion. We try to explain to people that the US economy at $31.5 trillion is like a big ship in the ocean; it cannot turn quickly. If people would be patient, I think they would see by the end of 2026 there would be further progress and I believe it's possible the trade deficit could see a decline to somewhere around $600-$700 billion based on the fourth quarter of 2025. I know there's a snafu with the Supreme Court ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which was used in the first quarter last year to implement many of the tariffs, was ruled illegal. But there are other ways to impose tariffs such as section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 or section 301 of the Trade Act that the president used in his first term. Also available is section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. I don't believe the Supreme Court ruling will lead to an end of tariffs as the Administration will look at these other avenues. One major positive from these tariffs has been the announcements of various trade deals that have resulted in trillions of dollars promised by other countries to build manufacturing and other things in our economy.   Why is automobile insurance so high? Your first thought may be the insurance companies are gouging their customers just to make big profits. First off, insurance companies are generally public companies that have shareholders who would not be investing in their company if it was losing money and not paying dividends. The high cost of premiums is not the insurance companies' fault as in recent years things have really changed. Over the past five years, physical damage costs have increased by 47%. This is because of the higher price of cars and all the extra bells and whistles that add up when there's damage to a vehicle. Bodily injury claims are up 52% over the last five years because of the vast amount of new personal injury lawyers who have come on the scene and are pushing for higher settlements, even on small fender benders. Around 95% of these cases are settled and do not go to court. Many of your less reputable attorneys know this and hold the insurance companies' hostage. Either settle up with us now or go to court and spend a lot more money and time. Unfortunately, if you're a responsible driver that makes your premium payments, you are helping absorb the cost of uninsured and underinsured motorists which is up 72%. I'm not a big person for government regulation, but I do believe governments need to step in and verify that all people on the road have auto insurance and a reasonable amount. There's a trend starting in Florida, which is tort reform that has reduced litigation, and the top five insurance companies in the state have requested rate reductions of 5.9%. There is something in the auto insurance industry called fender bender litigation and this tort reform would help states like New York, California and other states to prevent insurance companies from having to pay ridiculous settlements for little dings and dents and fake injuries. Wouldn't it be nice if the state of California passed laws to help consumers to pay less for auto insurance?   Financial Planning: What Is the Goal of Tax Planning? Most people would assume the goal of tax planning is simply to reduce taxes, or even to reduce lifetime taxes, but that should not be the focus.  The true purpose of tax planning is to increase the level of after-tax income by intentionally managing assets and income sources. If the objective were merely to pay less in taxes, the solution would be simple: stop earning money. But earning less would also leave you with fewer resources and less freedom. What people ultimately want is more net income, more access to money, because that provides flexibility, security, and the ability to live life on their terms. Effective tax planning achieves this by building assets and income streams and structuring them in a way that allows you to access them efficiently. This means investing in the right types of assets, placing them in the right types of accounts, adjusting the strategy over time as income and tax laws change, and withdrawing funds at the right time and in the right manner. When you understand that the true purpose of tax planning is to maximize after-tax access to wealth, not merely minimize taxes, you make better decisions that improve your financial life.   Companies Discussed: Vulcan Materials Company (VMC), Leidos Holdings, Inc. (LDOS), Packaging Corporation of America (PKG) & Caesars Entertainment, Inc. (CZR)

For the first time, batteries and solar powered California around the clock, with batteries running as the number one morning electricity source at nearly 6,000 megawatts. Tim Montague and John Weaver break down this milestone and a packed week of clean energy news, from a Supreme Court ruling striking down global tariffs to a Republican push to reinstate the 30% solar ITC. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTSCalifornia achieved 24/7 solar and battery power for the first time. Batteries discharged through the night and morning, charged on near-free midday solar, then discharged again in the evening. (PV Magazine)Republican House member Brian Fitzpatrick voted against the "One Big Bill" over the removal of solar and wind tax credits and now pushes to reinstate the ITC. (E&E News)The Supreme Court ruled Trump's global tariffs illegal. John clarifies this removes the 10-20% blanket tariffs on goods like copper, steel, and aluminum. Solar module tariffs, battery tariffs from China (40-60%), and Southeast Asian tariffs remain in place. Indonesia's solar imports surged from 6 megawatts to 2.5 gigawatts of modules in under two years. Petitioners in the AD/CVD investigation now cite "critical circumstances." Expect new tariff action targeting Indonesian modules. (Solar Power World)Hithium completed the world's first open-door fire safety test on a 6.25 MWh battery energy storage system. Even with doors open and safety systems disabled, adjacent battery units were undamaged. (ESS News)Tim reports the number of battery companies at Intersolar roughly doubled year over year, now outnumbering solar module companies.With the ITC phase-out approaching, electricity prices climbing, and battery deployments accelerating, the stories covered here directly affect procurement decisions, financial modeling, and market strategy in 2026. Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Most solar asset owners still manage performance data the same way they did 10 years ago. Dan Leary, founder of Denowatts, says that needs to change. In this episode, recorded live at RE+ Northeast in Boston, Tim Montague sits down with Leary and Doug Macmillan of Portside Systems to explore energy accounting, a method for identifying exactly where solar production losses occur and what owners and operators should do about them. Denowatts is collaborating with Sandia National Laboratories to build what Leary calls "GAAP for solar," a common standard for reporting and benchmarking solar asset performance. If you manage solar assets or invest in solar projects, this conversation explains how better data practices lead to more predictable returns.EPISODE HIGHLIGHTSDan Leary explains that most solar operators still manage data the way they did a decade ago, despite significant advances in monitoring and analysis tools. Denowatts built a smarter weather station (the Deno) and a real-time analytics platform to close that gap.Denowatts breaks down solar production losses into four categories: climate-related issues, modeling errors, external factors beyond anyone's control, and problems within the commercial boundary that owners and operators are able to fix. This framework gives asset managers clear direction on where to focus recovery efforts.Doug Macmillan explains Portside's role as the system integrator for the Denowatts platform on distributed generation sites. Portside handles design, equipment fabrication, delivery, and commissioning, working from their UL 508 panel shop.This episode is for solar asset managers, project developers, EPCs, and clean energy investors who want more from their performance data. With Denowatts and Sandia Labs working toward a common reporting standard, the solar industry is moving closer to the kind of financial transparency that attracts long-term capital. If you own or operate solar assets, the time to modernize your data strategy is now.Connect with Dan Leary and Doug MacmillanDan Leary Denowatts Doug Macmillan Portside Systems Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

The 30% investment tax credit is going away. The safe harbor window closes July 3, 2026. After that, commercial solar stands on its own. So what separates the companies that thrive from the ones that disappear? Costa Nicolaou, founder and CEO of PanelClaw, joins Tim Montague at RE+ Northeast in Boston for a direct conversation about surviving and growing in the post-ITC market. This episode covers domestic manufacturing strategy, FEOC compliance, logistics innovation, and three specific moves every solar installer and EPC should make right now.Episode Highlights- The ITC was a runway, not a permanent subsidy. Costa frames the 30% credit as a 10-year opportunity to build manufacturing capacity, drive innovation, and prepare for an unsubsidized market. The companies that treated it as a margin cushion instead of a building tool are the ones at risk.- PanelClaw doubled its US manufacturing capacity in 2022 and expanded again. The company operates a full just-in-time domestic production model. No inventory. Enough capacity to serve the entire US flat roof market from American facilities.- PanelClaw is the only flat roof racking company with 100% FEOC compliance for the January 1 through July 3, 2026 window. Their products qualify for the complete domestic content stack: rail, structural fastener, and production.- ClawLogic gives EPCs real-time visibility into every order. Line items, pallet sizes, pallet weights, ship dates, and a live truck tracker. Costa modeled it after Amazon's delivery tracking experience. The platform has been live for three years. No competitor in flat roof racking has replicated it. PanelClaw is now launching ClawLogic in Europe.- Costa delivers three rules for solar installers preparing for the post-ITC market. First, resist the race to the bottom. Second, pursue extreme collaboration across the value chain. Third, ask every supplier about their innovation roadmap. The safe harbor window is closing. FEOC compliance deadlines are active now. The decisions you make this year on partners, manufacturing, and operations will determine whether your company leads or exits by 2028.Connect with Costa Nicolaou LinkedInWebsite Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

One LinkedIn post. Almost 400,000 impressions. Aaron Nichols has earned 1.8 million impressions on LinkedIn in one year, and he did it by breaking every rule the clean energy industry follows. His message is blunt: solar companies insist on being boring, and they are losing the public conversation because of it. In this episode, host Tim Montague sits down with Aaron Nichols to break down four storytelling rules that solar professionals need to win attention, build trust, and drive business on LinkedIn.Aaron Nichols serves as Research and Policy Specialist at Exact Solar, a regional solar installer based in Pennsylvania. He also hosts This Week in Solar, a news and interview podcast covering the solar industry. His article, "Four Rules of Storytelling That Corporate America Desperately Needs," outlines the framework discussed in this episode.EPISODE HIGHLIGHTSAaron earned 1.8 million LinkedIn impressions in a single year, including one post that reached nearly 400,000 people. His approach: lead with emotion, not data. Personal stories and humor drove the strongest results, outperforming technical content by wide margins.Aaron outlines four rules of storytelling for solar and clean energy professionals. Rule one: tell one story at a time. Rule two: make people care before making your case. Rule three: if it's complicated, you haven't finished thinking. Rule four: Put a face on it by using personal LinkedIn pages instead of company pages.Solar professionals do not need to wait for conferences to build relationships and generate business. Aaron used LinkedIn to launch a podcast, organize local events with crowds of 40 to 70 people, build industry relationships, and create direct revenue opportunities for a small regional installer.With rising energy bills putting electricity in the news daily and federal policy headwinds challenging the industry, the ability to tell compelling stories and build trust on platforms like LinkedIn has never mattered more.Connect with Aaron NicholsAaron Nichols LinkedInThis Week in Solar"Making Numbers Count" by Chip Heath and Carla Starr Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Wind farms are defeating the Trump administration's stop-work orders 5-0 as federal judges allow offshore construction to resume, while data centers drive consumer power bills up 30-50% across the country. Tim Montague and John Weaver cover the latest clean energy developments from RE+ Northeast, including breakthrough robotics from Luminous and the emerging DIY solar market that could deliver $20,000 home systems. Episode Highlights• Offshore Wind Legal Victories: Five federal judges have now overruled Trump administration stop-work orders on East Coast wind farms, including the latest ruling allowing Sunrise Wind construction to continue off New York. (The Guardian)• Data Center Grid Impact: Consumer power bills have risen 30-50% in some regions due to data center demand. (Environmental Law and Policy Center)• DIY Solar Market Emergence: Post-ITC market conditions are driving growth in DIY solar kits, with companies like Gigawatt offering 10kW solar plus 30kWh battery systems for around $20,000, roughly one-third the cost of traditional installer pricing. • Chinese Poly Silicon Tariffs: China extended import tariffs on US polysilicon from the Obama era, though the 50% tariffs have minimal current impact since Chinese polysilicon now costs less than half global pricing. China produces 90% of the global polysilicon supply. (Pv Magazine)• Grid Battery Storage Surge: Grid battery demand increased 51% while EV battery demand grew 26%, with grid storage now representing 25% of global battery demand, up from historical projections of 10-15%. (Benchmark Mineral Intelligence)• Luminous Robotics Progress: Solar installation robot company unveiled new pallet-carrying robot to complement their module placement system, tripling headcount year-over-year and working on utility-scale projects in Australia and the US. Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Storm Fern just knocked out power for nearly a million Americans. But here's what the media won't tell you: this wasn't a freak accident—it's the new normal.New research from the Union of Concerned Scientists reveals that 100% of the worst power outages in the last decade share one shocking cause. And it's getting worse every year.This matters now because we're building infrastructure today that needs to last 50 years. But we're planning for yesterday's climate while tomorrow's storms are already here. The result? Billions in damage, lives lost, and communities left powerless when they need electricity most.Key Takeaways:• Why every single major blackout traces back to extreme weather events• The 3 states actually preparing for climate disasters (and why 47 aren't)• How community-scale microgrids could end power outages forever• Why low-income communities suffer most when the lights go out• The infrastructure investments we're delaying that will cost livesThe guests are Rachel Licker and Sam Gomberg from the Union of Concerned Scientists, authors of the "Power After the Storm" report. Their research uses fine-resolution power outage data to reveal patterns that should terrify anyone who depends on electricity, which is all of us.We have the technology to build resilient grids. Solar, wind, batteries, and smart switchgear can create community-scale microgrids that keep the lights on when the big grid fails. The question isn't whether we can do it, it's whether we'll act before the next Storm Fern.Connect with Union of Concerned Scientists Union of Concerned ScientistsRachel LickerSam GombergPower After the Storm report Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

A Missouri state senator wants to ban all solar construction for two years, threatening a 430 MW project already under construction. On the Clean Power Hour Live, Tim Montague and John Weaver cover the Missouri solar moratorium, the first UL standard for balcony solar, Elon Musk's 100 GW solar manufacturing ambitions, and Vineyard Wind's court victory sending its final turbine to sea. They also dig into LFP cell prices hitting $60/kWh in China, zinc battery economics for commercial projects, and what a $2.3 trillion global energy transition spend means for the US market.Episode Highlights:A Missouri state senator filed legislation to halt all solar construction, including projects already underway, through the end of 2027. A 430 MW project set to double the state's solar capacity faces risk. (LinkedIn)Balcony solar UL 3700 standard. UL released its first standard for balcony solar, UL 3700. (PV Magazine)Musk's 100 GW solar manufacturing plan. Elon Musk announced SpaceX and xAI will each source 100 GW of solar to power data centers. (PV Magazine)LFP cells race to 500+ Ah. Chinese battery manufacturers are scaling LFP cells from 314 Ah to 500 Ah and beyond. (PV Magazine)Global clean energy investment reached a record $2.3 trillion in 2025, up 8% from 2024. (Bloomberg NEF)Solar module prices from China rose 20 to 30% ahead of an April 1 export tax, adding 9 to 10% to costs. (PV Magazine)This episode is for solar professionals, battery storage developers, project developers, and clean energy investors tracking policy risk and market shifts. Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

What separates solar projects that get built from those that die in development? Brad Stutzman has spent 16 years figuring out the answer.Brad is the Founder and CEO of O3 Energy, a Dallas-based solar development and construction company. He started in 2009 during the Great Recession, pivoting from real estate financing to renewable energy. O3 Energy has since deployed hundreds of on-site solar projects across commercial, municipal, and non-profit customers throughout the Southwest, Hawaii, Guam, and Mexico.Key Discussion PointsHow the 2009 recession and Obama's American Recovery Act launched Brad's solar career through the 1603 grant programWhy behind-the-meter projects reduce development risk by eliminating land acquisition and off-taker uncertaintyO3 Energy's approach to "practical innovation" and requiring ROI from every business improvementHow Brad converted a capped New Mexico landfill near Sandia Labs into a working solar facility (brownfields to brightfields)Why Brad is repowering a project with Erthos flat-to-earth racking technology after wind damage destroyed the Ballasted fixed tilt systemThe future of "renewable baseload power" through solar plus battery storage achieving grid parityAI integration in solar monitoring platforms that analyze system performance and troubleshoot issuesBrad's 16 years in solar development reveal a consistent truth: successful projects require patience, practical thinking, and smart partnerships. His brownfield conversion near nuclear weapons storage required Nuclear Regulatory Authority sign-off. His California municipal project needed creative cross-property engineering. Neither would have happened without tenacity. As Brad puts it, mistakes are only mistakes if you don't learn from them. O3 Energy continues expanding into the Midwest and Mexico while preparing for the next wave of solar plus storage. The company is actively seeking partners for development, construction, and asset management opportunities nationwide.Connect with Brad Stutzman Brad's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradstutzman/03 Energy Website: https://o3energy.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Most businesses are stuck in AI demo mode, watching impressive one-off showcases that never become daily operations. In this episode, Tim Montague welcomes Josh Huston from Agents Anywhere to break down the three categories of AI opportunity: apps, agents, and automations. Josh has spent over three years helping companies turn AI from buzzword into working business infrastructure.Key Discussion Points:Why AI is an accelerator for working workflows, not a fix for broken processesThe three AI opportunity categories: apps (custom interfaces), agents (goal-driven LLMs with tool access), and automations (background workflows)How data ownership shifts when you build custom applications instead of relying on third-party toolsReal-world example: proposal generation workflow reduced from hours to minutes using AI agentsPilot project framework: $15K-$25K investments targeting high-impact workflows with measurable ROICost structure for AI agents: service fees, token usage (as low as 2 cents per process), and platform licensingThis episode gives clean energy operators a practical framework for AI adoption. The message is clear: stop accumulating tools and start building strategic workflows. Josh and Tim walk through the entire process from identifying friction points to scaling successful pilots across your organization. If you run a solar EPC, energy storage company, or any cleantech operation feeling pressure to "do something with AI," this conversation provides the roadmap. The approach is simple: find what works, accelerate it with AI, measure ROI, then expand intentionally.Book a strategy call today: https://calendly.com/tim-montague/ai-consulting#/ Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Energy storage is not a green technology. It's grid infrastructure.That reframe from Shawn Shaw, CEO of Camelot Energy Group and author of "Energy Storage Systems," challenges how we talk about batteries in the energy transition. With 22 years in solar and storage and 1.2 GWh of projects commissioned in late 2025, Shaw brings practical insight into why storage matters for grid operators regardless of your views on renewables. China installed 65 GWh of storage in December 2025 alone. The US installed 40-50 GWh for the entire year. This conversation explains why that gap matters.Key Discussion PointsWhy energy storage is a grid resource like transformers and substations, not just a companion to renewables. Loads are more dynamic than ever, and batteries provide the controllability grid operators need.How storage transforms predictable renewables into dispatchable assets. A 100kW solar project might earn only 10kW capacity credit alone, but pairing it with batteries captures significantly more value.The real data on battery safety: Commercial and utility-scale systems catch fire at 0.3% per year, the same rate as residential homes. NFPA 855 2026 now requires active ventilation and separate fire and explosion testing.Hot storage markets in 2026: Massachusetts 83E procurement, New York's index storage credit, Illinois CRGA legislation, and why Texas requires nodal-level analysis to avoid 50% revenue swings.Why utility interconnection delays are pushing developers toward microgrids. Google acquired Intersect Power for $4.75 billion to self-develop solar and storage near data centers.FEOC compliance economics: Chinese DC blocks at $100-125/kWh vs Tesla at $300-500/kWh. Developers may want FEOC free but the economics of built in America may drive business as usual for BESS procurement. The devil is in the details! This episode offers a clear-eyed view of where the industry stands and what it takes to move faster.Connect with Shawn ShawLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnshawpe/Website: https://www.camelotenergygroup.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

#EP328 Federal funding for tribal clean energy projects has been rescinded. Tribes that invested millions in solar and microgrid projects now face stalled construction, lost jobs, and broken promises. David Harper, CEO of Huurav, is stepping in with bridge loans to keep these projects alive.David Harper is a tribal member from the Colorado River Indian Tribes on the Arizona-California border. He started his solar career fighting developers who disturbed sacred artifacts and human remains on tribal lands. Today, he runs Huurav, a company providing bridge financing for the 575 federally recognized tribes across the United States. His sister company, 7 Skyline, provides electrical engineering consulting to 80-90 tribes nationwide.Episode Highlights:The 2021 Infrastructure Bill allocated $10-15 billion for tribal energy projects. Much of that funding has been clawed back.Tribes that invested their own money now have stalled projects with no path to completion.Huurav provides 2-6 year bridge loans that allow tribes to continue construction while securing permanent financing.Capital stacking allows multiple funders (CDFIs, philanthropy, financial institutions, etc) to share risk on larger projects.Case study: Guidiville Rancheria in Mendocino County received a $1M bridge loan for a 500kW solar plus 1.5MW battery storage microgrid serving 44 homes.Huurav has 22 projects in its pipeline with more tribes requesting support.Tribal communities often suffer brownouts and blackouts because they sit at the end of utility lines. Microgrids offer energy independence.David Harper's story captures what happens when federal promises disappear overnight. Tribes that did everything right, completed feasibility studies, hired workers, and approved scopes of work, are left holding the bill. Huurav fills that gap with bridge loans sized to what tribes can pay back. This model builds credit history, creates jobs, and moves the 22 projects in their pipeline toward completion.Connect with David HarperLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-harper-ab6b762b5/Huurav: https://www.huurav.com/7Skyline: https://www.7skyline.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

In this week's Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague and co-host John Weaver examine the widening gap between China and the United States in clean energy deployment. The hosts analyze new data from Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson showing China is on track for a clean economy by 2050, while the US lags a century behind. They discuss record battery installations, solar manufacturing shifts, and what these trends mean for energy independence and economic competitiveness.Episode Highlights:China projected to reach a clean economy by 2050, US not until 2148 at current pace (PV Magazine)China installed 65 gigawatt hours of battery storage in December alone, exceeding the US total for the entire 2025 (Benchmark)Longi joins push to reduce silver content in solar panel production to cut costs by 10-20 percent (Bloomberg)US solar panel manufacturing reaches 65 gigawatts annual capacity in 2025 (Bloomberg)Discussion of Dan Wang's book "Breakneck" exploring why China builds infrastructure faster than the USAnalysis of energy independence as a national security strategy in the context of global oil conflictsFirst Solar, Qcells, Heliene, and other domestic manufacturers lead US solar production growthThe data shows China moving at unprecedented speed in clean energy deployment, while the US faces a critical choice about accelerating its transition. Energy independence through solar, wind, and storage is both an economic opportunity and a national security imperative. Share your thoughts on how the US can close this gap in the comments below. Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

For the first Energy Transition Today episode of the year, we summarise the goings on over the past few weeks, starting with the US military intervention in Venezuela.The Trump administration's intervention in Venezuela accompanied by a soft pledge to exploit the country's oil resources has cast doubts over US' energy transition targets. This move, barely two days into the new year, follows additional restrictions on 6GW of offshore wind capacity that is currently under construction.On this side of the pond, there has been slow but steady progress within the renewables sector with Gresham Houses new storage acquisition, Equitix increasing its ownership of offshore transmission assets, among other green infra-assets, and the gradual inflow of winner announcements under NESO's Gate 2 tender.Poland, on the other hand, has defied all odds and successfully concluded its first offshore wind auction late last month. The country also proceeded to log impressive progress on grid upgrade projects that will facilitate the influx of offshore wind generation in the future.In addition, Poland has been steadily adding more gas peaking capacity to its generation portfolio to plug the gap left by its aging coal fleet. This move has widespread backing including from commercial banks.Hosts: Maya Chavvakula, Daniel Burge, Mathilde Dorbessan, Leonard MüllerReach out to us at: podcasts@inspiratia.comFind all of our latest news and analysis by subscribing to inspiratia For tickets to our events email conferences@inspiratia.com or buy them directly on our website. Listen to all our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other providers. Music credit: NDA/Show You instrumental/Tribe of Noise©2025 inspiratia. All rights reserved.This content is protected by copyright. Please respect the author's rights and do not copy or reproduce it without permission.

#EP327 What if we could remove a trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere for $2 billion a year?Peter Fiekowsky, author of "Climate Restoration" and founder of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, returns to The Clean Power Hour with a solution most people have never heard of: localized ocean iron fertilization. An astrophysicist and semiconductor entrepreneur by training, Peter has spent over a decade researching methods to restore atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels of 300 ppm. His work has taken him from the Vatican to the White House, and he now leads a growing movement to fund and deploy this proven natural process.KEY DISCUSSION POINTS:Why the energy transition alone will not prevent 450 ppm by 2050Localized ocean iron fertilization targets only 1% of the ocean using downwelling eddiesThe Mt. Pinatubo volcanic eruption in 1991 caused global CO2 to flatline for two yearsTotal cost: $1-2 billion per year (one penny per American per day)This approach removes 1,000 to 10,000 times more carbon than traditional ocean fertilization methodsRobotic ships could distribute iron pellets without crew costsThe Foundation's "million sponsor" campaign aims to demonstrate public demand for climate restorationThe wind, solar, and battery industries are doing essential work to eliminate 50 gigatons of annual emissions. That fight must continue. But stopping the bleeding is not the same as healing the wound. Peter Fiekowsky's research shows that nature has already solved this problem dozens of times through the Ice Age cycle. The question is whether humanity will choose to replicate what works. For the cost of a penny a day per American, we have the option to return atmospheric CO2 to safe levels within 25 years. The technology exists. The funding is achievable. The only missing ingredient is the collective decision to do it.Join the Movement: Be one of the million sponsors helping to restore CO2 to safe levels by 2050. Donate now: https://foundationforclimaterestoration.org/donate/Connect with Peter Fiekowsky Website: www.peterfiekowsky.com/LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/pfiekowsky/ Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

#EP326 Happy Holidays! Today on the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague breaks down his top 5 episodes of 2025, featuring conversations that shaped how we think about solar, storage, virtual power plants, microgrids, and AI. From Jigar Shah's call for the industry to become a political force to Spark AI's permitting breakthroughs, these episodes capture where clean energy is headed.Key Episodes Covered:Episode 304 - Jigar Shah85% of new grid capacity will be solar, wind, and batteriesFossil fuels outspend clean energy 10:1 on political lobbyingVPPs could shift 20% of peak load by 203020% of Americans struggle to afford their electricity billsEpisode 274 - Ryan Mayfield and Jayson Smith CPS America's Gonzo containerized battery (125-256 kWh)20-millisecond switchover for grid-forming capabilityDaisy chain up to 12 units for megawatt-scale deployments60% of CPS workforce dedicated to serviceEpisode 307 - Peter Kelly-Detwiler 1,500 MW of data center load disconnected in Virginia incidentPJM capacity prices jumped from $30 to $329 per MW-dayCalifornia VPPs dispatched 535 MW from 100,000 homesEpisode 310 - Jeff St. John (Canary Media) 93% of new U.S. grid additions were solar, batteries, and windTexas ERCOT grid now 50% solar, wind, and batteriesCalifornia VPPs show 2:1 cost-benefit ratioTexas allocated $1.8B for microgrids after Winter Storm UriEpisode 322 - Julia Wu and Anuj Saigal (Spark AI) Platform compresses 4-10 hours of research to secondsStandard Solar reduced acquisition diligence from months to one weekThree core use cases: site selection, regulatory monitoring, acquisition due diligenceBonus: Episode 296 - Mark Palmer (Conductor Solar)Most listened to and shared episode on SpotifyCovers PPAs, project finance, and tax credit swappingDiscusses tariffs, supply chain pressures, and state policy importanceEpisodes MentionedEp 304 - https://youtu.be/lGv6NoDlf70Ep 274 - https://youtu.be/QxLIzBSM-lQEp 307 - https://youtu.be/apMrWUz7TV8Ep 310 - https://youtu.be/76PDeZ7ZGpsEp 322 - https://youtu.be/B3t0cpvTT-YEp 296 - https://youtu.be/aj_zNnpAUk8 Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Home battery storage sits at less than 1% market penetration in America. The solar industry spent years focused on small urban systems while whole-home backup solutions remained out of reach for most homeowners. Tim Montague sits down with James Showalter, founder and CEO of EG4 Electronics, to discuss whole-home backup solutions that provide true energy independence. James shares his journey from installing off-grid systems at age 15 to building one of America's fastest-growing solar and battery companies. EG4 Electronics is a premier solar manufacturer based in Texas, dedicated to delivering high-quality, affordable, and reliable energy solutions. EG4 is committed to empowering homes and businesses with energy independence.KEY DISCUSSION POINTS:Battery storage adoption remains below 1% of American homes, with James predicting a majority will have batteries in his lifetime, as costs decline and whole-home solutions become viable across broader geographic marketsIndustry concentration on small urban residential systems left whole-home backup opportunities underserved in suburban and rural markets EG4's product strategy offers installers a choice between different battery configurations, letting them select the right solution for each customer's needs and budget constraintsWhole home backup requires different economics than partial backup systems popular in dense urban areas, driving EG4's focus on affordability and power capacity for homes with higher energy loadsPartnership approach with LG Energy Solutions provides one path for installers needing domestic content compliance, while maintaining imported options for projects where upfront cost determines feasibilityThe residential battery market hasn't scratched the surface. Current adoption sits below 1%. The solar industry concentrated on one narrow segment while whole-home storage opportunities in broader markets went largely unaddressed. EG4's approach focuses on those overlooked opportunities.Connect with James Showalter, EG4 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-showalter-9a0599156/Website: https://eg4electronics.com/ Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Microgrids offer utilities eight distinct value stacks (or streams), yet most still treat them as experimental pilots. Today on the Clean Power Hour, we reveal how microgrids are strategic network assets that deliver value every single day, not just when the grid fails. Martin Szczepanik is Director of Energy and Resources at Baringa, a global energy consultancy. He brings 11 years of utility strategy experience, including work with SolarCity, major West Coast utilities, and renewable energy developers. Baringa recently released a white paper called "From Pilots to Portfolios: Scaling the Rollout of Utility Microgrids."Key Discussion Points:• The complete microgrid value stack: resilience, distribution capacity deferral, transmission capacity deferral, ancillary services, energy arbitrage, generation capacity deferral, avoided emissions, and avoided public safety power shutoffs (PSPS)• Why resilience differs from reliability: climate-driven extreme weather events versus age and condition-driven outages• How billion-dollar natural disasters increased from once every 90 days in the 1980s to once every 19 days today, which necessitates the increased need for microgrids• Distribution and transmission capacity deferral: using microgrids to avoid $5-10 million infrastructure upgrades• Energy arbitrage opportunities: charging batteries when solar floods the grid, discharging during peak demand• FERC 2222 enabling distributed energy resources to participate in wholesale markets and earn revenue• California wildfires and PSPS (Public Safety Power Shutoffs) events: how microgrids reduce the cost of de-energizing lines• Why utilities need to assess microgrids in distribution planning instead of defaulting to substations and reconductoringConnect with Martin Szczepanik, Baringa LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/martinszczepanik/Website: www.baringa.com/en/about/regions/north-america/microgrids/Whitepaper: www.baringa.com/en/insights/digitising-the-energy-system/scaling-microgrids/ Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

#EP323 Building clean energy projects faster starts with better tools. Maryssa Barron, Founder and CEO of BuildQ, joins Tim Montague to discuss how AI transforms energy project development. Maryssa Barron is the founder and CEO of BuildQ, the enterprise AI platform purpose-built for clean energy project teams to accelerate development, financing, and asset management. She brings cross-disciplinary expertise in renewable energy, project finance, and law, with experience spanning the full project lifecycle. Before founding BuildQ, Maryssa advised Fortune 50 companies and leading developers on renewable energy procurement at Edison Energy and LevelTen Energy. She also served as Chief Operating Officer of a global solar company, where she oversaw project development, financing, and operations across international markets. Key Highlights:How BuildQ reduces project analysis time from 3 weeks to 3 daysWhy one developer uses BuildQ instead of hiring 15 new employeesAI frameworks that analyze interconnection queues and permitting dataThe role of human expertise in AI-assisted energy developmentHow law firms and conservative industries are adopting AI toolsChina's 10X infrastructure buildout advantage and U.S. national security implicationsBehind-the-meter solutions and data center co-location trendsEarly adoption benefits in the energy sectorThe energy sector needs speed and scale. AI tools like BuildQ make both possible.Connect with Maryssa Barron, BuildQ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryssa-barron/Website: buildq.ai Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

This week on Clean Power Hour Live, Tim Montague and John Weaver break down the biggest solar and storage headlines shaping the industry right now.The US reached 40 gigawatts of grid storage in 2025, beating the 35 gigawatt goal set in 2017. But supply chains are struggling to keep up. 100 amp-hour battery cells are sold out through 2026 as demand surges across residential, commercial, and utility projects.John discusses his company's expansion into Illinois, where new legislation adds 873 megawatts of solar and 3 gigawatts of storage over the next few years. The state is also unlocking VPP programs, giving distributed batteries a bigger role in grid operations.Episode Highlights:US grid storage installations reached 40 gigawatts in 2025, exceeding the 35 gigawatt goal set in 2017 (Energy Storage Association via Canary Media)Illinois passes new legislation adding 873 megawatts of solar and 3 gigawatts of storage, enabling VPP programs Battery cell shortage intensifies as 100 amp hour cells sell out through 2026 due to demand across residential and utility sectors (PV Magazine)Electric freight vehicles and delivery trucks show explosive growth in China, with EVs approaching 50% of all vehicle sales (John Hanger via Blue Sky)Natural gas prices spike above $5, expected to drive electricity rate increases in 2026 through utility cost recapture mechanisms (Bloomberg)US extends tariff exclusions for solar manufacturing equipment, including silicon growth furnaces and wire saws (PV Magazine)The discussion explores why battery adoption creates a flywheel effect for solar installations, how state incentives are driving developer interest, and what supply chain pressures mean for project timelines in 2026. Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com