Latest / Clean Power Hour / Bryan Wagner, James Oswald, Anton Patton: 3-Phase String Innovation with CPS America EP136

Transcript

Bryan Wagner, James Oswald, Anton Patton: 3-Phase String Innovation with CPS America EP136 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Tim Montague: The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America. The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS, 250 to 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 250 to 75 pairs well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions. Go to chin power systems.com To find out more what we
• 1:27
  Bryan Wagner: think it's all about jobs. How do we create jobs? So he said he had three jobs last week? That's amazing.
• 1:33
  Bryan Wagner: To hear. We don't always know.
• 1:33
  Bryan Wagner: But you know, I think that's, that's what it's all about is giving those folks the opportunity to come in to learn grow their
• 1:43
  intro: career, are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week, want to go deeper into decarbonisation? We do too.
• 1:58
  intro: We're here to help you understand command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get together and we can speed the energy transition.
• 2:12
  Tim Montague: Today on the Clean Power Hour, it's a special episode, we are here at the Chint headquarters in Dallas, Texas, otherwise known as CPS America, I'm so excited to have three executives from cient on the stage with me, and we are preparing for a big event for you guys today, which we're gonna get into. But first, I want to get a little background on yourselves. Who are you? How did you come to cient? And what are you up to in the world? So we'll start with you, James Oswald, tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 2:41
  James Oswald: James Oswald, I'm service director. I've been with gent for eight years now joined in 2015. As we were just starting off, just starting to grow. I run the service team and the lab here in Texas.
• 2:58
  Tim Montague: And what exactly is your role at the company?
• 3:00
  Tim Montague: James?
• 3:01
  James Oswald: Service Director, so I run the service team. I field all the service questions.
• 3:05
  James Oswald: I run the repair lab here. I have 28 employees in my department, I have seven leads.
• 3:18
  James Oswald: And the rest are all employees.
• 3:18
  James Oswald: So
• 3:21
  Tim Montague: there I asked what is keeping you up at night?
• 3:24
  Tim Montague: Everything. All right, well, thank you for being here. And next. Brian Wagner, president of CBS America. Great to see you again. Thank you for having me here. And tell us a little bit about what you're up to today with this event.
• 3:41
  Bryan Wagner: Sure, yeah. No, thanks for being here. Tim, we appreciate you being a part of our team. And everyone that helped make today a reality.
• 3:48
  Bryan Wagner: Today is really about innovation. So we actually the building we're in right now, in the Greater Dallas area, Richardson, Texas, which we've called home since 2009, is a small r&d Lab is now a brand new facility, about a year later, that that we've invested, you know, millions of dollars into here in the US, we've created jobs here in the US. And today's event really is to thank all of our customers, you know, a lot of the partners, and folks that will be here today, you know, and throughout this week, we're just saying thank you, right, and letting them obviously have some fun. It started March Madness. So we know that, you know, we hope we can, you know, bring folks through the facility, you know, they can learn something about our emerging technology, our innovation, and mainly our team.
• 4:44
  Bryan Wagner: Right. As Jim said, we probably doubled the size of the staff in the last 1218 months. We'll do it again in the next 1218 months. And, you know, that's really, thanks to our customers, you know, if you think about the partners that we have, and, you know, I think we're approaching, say, 500 companies we're working with in 2022. You know, it's really them hanging on through those headaches, you know, we talk about things that keep us up. In this business, every product you deploy, will fail.
• 5:16
  Bryan Wagner: So that's a hard thing to wrap your head around. We think of it more as you know, not sales, right? It's more operations, right? You have to obviously get a product into the field. But it's how you really run the business, the operations and the team to support the customers is what really today's all about, you know, what do they need from us? How can we help them or what technologies you know where, you know, today we're launching new products, we're talking about new new products. We actually just announced a 20% price cut on our 252 75 Two start this year. That's exciting, right?
• 5:51
  Bryan Wagner: And that's through the innovation that's through our customers, right? We think we think string inverters will be the future for utility scale.
• 6:02
  Bryan Wagner: Right. And that used to be a 200 kilowatts site. But now it could be, you know, 200 megawatts. So that's exciting.
• 6:09
  Tim Montague: Lots to unpack there. And if you're listening to this podcast, though, go to cin power systems.com. And click on the Jobs tab because these guys are recruiting a lot of people to the headquarters here in Dallas, but you also have offices on the west coast and the East Coast. That's right.
• 6:27
  Bryan Wagner: Yeah, we have a growing office. We just relocated from Morristown, New Jersey to Somerville just finished renovations there in downtown Somerville, great, great place for for adding jobs right in the town. There's very local, to where I'm from, but very excited to have us and our growing team, we actually have a partner in the same building across the across the street, which is fun and exciting. And yes, we also have we're Anton is in Pleasanton, California, and we have Southern California as well.
• 6:57
  Tim Montague: Well, welcome to the show. And Tom Patton, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to chin.
• 7:03
  Anton Patton: Yeah, so I'm the Product Management and applications engineering director here with CPS, leading our product management team, our engineers, supporting our products, supporting our customers, providing that engineering support, and also, you know, taking taking our customer feedback, seeing the market needs and figuring out what new new improvements new products we can come out with, to to best support the solar PV industry. And it's really been been exciting to kind of grow with the team and, and, and lead the market in in three phase string inverters. And prior to CPS, I was on the project development side. So as a system designer, working on the designs, the installations commissioning, I was able to take what I learned in my experience, and bring that to CPS and bring that into how we design our products, how we can best think of new ways and new ways to innovate and make it easier, cost efficient. And really effective on on the product side of bringing solutions for these, these projects.
• 8:21
  Tim Montague: I think that's a great place to start. You know, the solar industry is growing by leaps and bounds, we're we're going to install something like 25 gigawatts this year in the United States. And that's both a challenge and an opportunity, of course. So what are you hearing from customers, though, about string versus Central? That is a conversation. You guys are really on the bleeding edge of I think, with your, your larger string inverter lines. And, and so you know, when we think, megawatt to gigawatt scale plants, right, these, it is not unusual now in the United States to get 100 megawatt plant. And string inverters have many advantages. They're smaller, they're lighter, they're easier to get in and out of the field, so to speak. But what are you hearing from customers? And why is chin taking this very aggressive approach to putting string inverters in utility scale plants?
• 9:25
  Anton Patton: Yeah, I mean, string inverters. When you look over the last 10 years, I mean, 10 years ago, a central inverter was used for a 50 kilowatt plant. And now you're looking at multi multi 100 megawatt plants using string inverters. And what we hear from customers and what we see in the industry is, you know, a lot of the developers, the installers, they're seeing the advantages of string. A lot of it on the operation side, some of the things you mentioned, you know, ease of replacement repairs, and a lot of it is related to making sure these systems have minimized downtime, and that these plants are producing the maximum amount of energy they can. And the string inverter, the cost, the capex has gone down dramatically over the last decade. And you're really getting close to central inverters on on the capex side, while bringing in the advantages of, you know, less downtime, quicker repairs, you don't have to wait for a specialized technician or the manufacturer, technician to come which could take take weeks and you know, you really think about these systems, three or four megawatts being down at a time, you know, is a huge impact on the energy production. So
• 11:42
  Tim Montague: that really is the key I think. And there's a there's a local case from my community in Champaign, Illinois, the University of Illinois has a five megawatt plant, which was their first large scale solar plant. Now they have a 12 megawatt plant also. But the the first plant was built with central inverters. And one of the inverters broke and the half the plant was down for something like six months, while they were waiting for a replacement part, or replacement vert, I don't know exactly what they ended up doing. Right. That's a lot of lost energy. And that means lost revenue lost savings.
• 12:17
  Tim Montague: Everybody's losing, right? And that's no bueno. So, so but I guess I would love to hear from from all of you, I mean, all of you are interfacing with your customers. And we're here today to celebrate Chin's customers, and give them a wonderful experience with your staff and with your products. And we can talk about what you know what we're in store for today. But what else is on your minds, I guess about customers and how CPS America approaches that?
• 12:53
  Bryan Wagner: Well, I was just going to mention that your story about the Illinois plant of five megawatts, I first experienced that I want to say in 2011 2012, something like that, when I was at Advanced Energy, which was the number one utility scale Central, very strong public companies still today, semiconductor company. You know, it's just a lot of times you have different management philosophies, teams changes, it's so hard to predict. So, five years out, 10 years out, I wish we all knew what we'd be doing and what you know, Trent would be doing even, it's very hard to predict, I think a three year three to five year is realistic. But what the customers have to live with is sometimes 510 2025 years, plant life and solar plant life. So I first experienced about a three to six month down inverter that I was part of the project. Back in 2011 2012. The customer is actually still our customer here, it's CPS today. And they've never looked back on Central. So sometimes you have that experience early on in your life. Some sometimes it comes later, as you're deploying, as your developers are deploying more and more solar, I think at the larger level, both in Europe and in Asia, you're looking at 80 to 90% of plants are below string now. So I think the US is just you know, depending on the different labor markets to you know, we've we're lucky because we've, you know, we have 15,000 or so inverters now in the field. I'm sorry, 15,000 plants, right. 110,000 inverters? Yep, sorry. So 15,000 plants gives us a lot of different experiences, different climates, different regions, different grids, right, different interaction with what's happening downstream from the solar plant. So string really gives you the flexibility in your design, like Anton saying, a lot of folks come in late, right, they only have three, three months to build a project, we have, like probably 500 megawatts, maybe even closer to a gigawatt right now, in stock, if all of a sudden your central inverters 40 5060 week lead time, like to match some of the Transformers out there, which happens, we can ship ship you the product literally by, you know, probably three o'clock today, if you need it, and get it there in the next three days.
• 15:14
  Bryan Wagner: So I think that's the flexibility string will happen is you're right as you're approaching a 1520 25 gigawatt market this year, whatever it ends up being, we know Chen will be ready, you know, our capacity in Thailand, where we're manufacturing the product right now, is this year approaching the five, six gigawatt level of capacity, we won't fill that, right. It's all dedicated for US market. We won't fill that because our business isn't growing that fast. But we're ready. If all of a sudden the demand is there. We just we just shipped a project that was 35 megawatts out in Arizona, and we learned to the project three months before roughly we had to shift, right normally, those are three year cycles to develop and, and it just converted, you know, one of the other manufacturers couldn't get chips or, you know, whatever happened, and we were there to step up.
• 16:05
  Bryan Wagner: And I think you'll see that trend happen more and more over the next 1218 24 months.
• 16:12
  Tim Montague: I mean, 2022 really was the year of supply chain issues, right. None of us said those two words more than in 2022. Yeah. And and so what you're putting your finger on is really vital. And this affects installers, developers, financiers, asset owners and customers who are benefiting from the solar plants, right.
• 16:34
  Tim Montague: Over the last
• 16:35
  Bryan Wagner: few years. You've had way more than just supply chain challenges we've had an epidemic pandemic how retitle that Um, you know, all kinds of things right? on the global front, you have a war going on.
• 16:47
  Bryan Wagner: There's a lot that's affecting the price of steel, aluminum, copper, all of these things that I think, you know, again, never once, do we now have stock of any product. Never once did we miss a shipment in all that time. And I think at times, you'll run into maybe even at times some of the manufacturers will run into a supply glut now, because they won't have the demand because the customers can't count on them. And they're going in different directions.
• 17:17
  Bryan Wagner: We hope they're going to CPS, because we're reading. And we're growing. And we're, as you see, we invested in the business here. Frankly speaking, we're even looking at the next facility. You know, IRAs. Very exciting. There's a lot we're looking at there.
• 17:30
  Tim Montague: Yep. So you're you're clearly a powerhouse when it comes to manufacturing. On the support side, what is your customers experience? What is the the uptime of the product that they're experiencing? And what is it that that you're doing to differentiate CPS America from all of your competition when it comes to service.
• 17:53
  James Oswald: So I'd say we have one of the best service teams in the industry today have field guides that go to the sites. And we ship out all failed units. If you have a failed unit, we send out an RMA within 24 hours comes out of this facility or one close by. So it's out within 24 hours going to you to be replaced. If you don't a lot of customers have extra units on site, and they just swapped them and then we just keep running their stock. But even if you don't, we'll have one to you within three to four days. So you'll be back up. If we need a field visit. I have guys that do that. That takes a little longer sometimes because of the limitations of the number of people and the travel. And we do have the Flex OM portal with the flex products that we use that we can monitor sites, we watch them some sites we watch daily, other sites we get notices on and we'll look at, we can change settings, adjust add firmware, adjust stuff as as needed on the fly. So and if the utility comes in and says we want to change power factors or we want to, you know, just change something then we can do that remotely. You don't even have to go out to the field to do it.
• 19:08
  Tim Montague: Just the fact that you can have spares on site is a major difference between central and string inverters and a good reason. That alone makes me think just do it but the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America. The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 250 to 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 250 to 75. pairs well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions. Go to cin power systems.com. To find out more.
• 19:55
  Tim Montague: You know, we have limited time this morning. I don't want to neglect why we're here. We're at your your innovation center in Richardson, Texas, in the Dallas area. And there's going to be 100 people, maybe 125 people here today. What is it that they're going to experience? And what are you looking forward to sharing with them?
• 20:17
  Bryan Wagner: We'll probably have closer to 200. But thank you. Yeah, oh, we're excited.
• 20:19
  Bryan Wagner: It's, it's gonna be fun.
• 20:22
  Bryan Wagner: Regardless, I think, you know, one of the exciting things for all of us, you know, James, and I've had many calls on the Saturday morning or Sunday morning that come up that we're just trying to support our team or customer, whatever happens, but today's are more days to celebrate our own team as well.
• 20:40
  Bryan Wagner: And all the hard work they've put in, I would say that we're the hardest working team. You know, we've we don't want to say in solar, because that might offend our customers. But we definitely would say in the on the supply chain side. Were the hardest working team. I think there's every day there's competitors coming in from all over the world, trying to work into this market. And we always use the phrase the kind of a startup 10 years later. I think nowadays we're more saying we're just an entrepreneurial type mindset. That's kind of how our company was founded Frank and and LOM and some of our KC Ed, some of our folks that have been with us and still rooting for us as they've gone on to do other bigger things, or different things, better things. You know, I think we're, you know, we're just really excited, you know, it really excited to, to be that entrepreneurial company that frankly speaking, we know the string inverters like the brains of the of the solar plant. And like James says, You can have all these different services that come off of that which we're working on. And, uh, you know, we're responding to every day. But also the different segments, you know, you can have a lot of different product segments that we're working on.
• 21:49
  Bryan Wagner: So energy storage, is, you know, we're showcasing a CNI ESS product. Here. Today, we're talking about our 252 75, which is, you know, launched about a year ago, we got UL a little over a year ago, but it's the real, it's the real product that will leap, kind of leap us into utility scale, we've already shipped 105 megawatt plant, we've already shipped the 35 megawatt plant, we've shipped a bunch in the, say 810 20 megawatt range. And we have every day just as we were walking in, yesterday, when we flew in, we had a 50 megawatt plant that's been converted to string. So it's kind of like that now where that used to happen with a two megawatt or a five megawatt, we're all of a sudden, we're like, whoa, we were only doing 100 kilowatts, 200 kilowatts, maybe a megawatt.
• 22:35
  Bryan Wagner: And now we're getting a two megawatt, we were excited with our 36 kilowatt right. But now that's happening. And we're also kind of like a more soft launch on our 350, which is coming next, you know, it is about chips, it's about supply. And right now we know over the next, say, 2023 2024, the 252 75 is going to be the workhorse.
• 22:59
  Tim Montague: I think it's so cool that you're you're having a effectively a company retreat, but you're opening your house and sharing that with your customers and partners and partners like myself. And I think that is just a fantastic way to build rapport between the company and your customers, like how better a way to build trust, and like the two things that we must have in order to do business with other humans, basically, yeah, you
• 23:25
  Bryan Wagner: don't have to do business with anyone. You want to do business with people you like and you trust, but also ones that you know, will be there when you need them. And I will say we've over over the last, you know, whatever period of time, we've had growing pains, like every other company where, you know, maybe you grow a little too fast. So we always are trying to figure that out.
• 23:44
  Bryan Wagner: That's why even this morning, I'm on the phone with all the ones that may help us make the decisions, we need to double again, and they double the size of the team and they're like, Well, okay, then you need to triple quadruple the revenue right now. I said, Yeah, sure.
• 24:00
  Bryan Wagner: Something like that.
• 24:01
  Anton Patton: Yeah. And that's, that's a big part of how we operate at CPS, you know, we really want to be a partner to our customers and provide that support throughout the project.
• 24:11
  Anton Patton: You know, we start with the applications engineering, you know, providing that support through the designs, making sure our customers, the engineers have everything they need to design, you know, their systems, optimal optimally and efficiently to avoid issues down the road. But then we're also there, you know, anything could come up. But you know, we at CPS prioritize, making sure our customers are supported. Working through challenges together, providing solutions, and that's a big part of today is really showcasing our team, and our products and how we have grown and evolved with the industry.
• 24:51
  Tim Montague: So I have a I have a stupid question. Who is your ideal customer?
• 24:56
  Bryan Wagner: That's a that's a hard one to answer because it changes. And I think we've always had the saying of like, if you just treat everyone the same, you kind of don't. We really mostly work on us. We really mostly try to get how do we get better? We don't even look at competitors. Now we know. We're trying to display central over. That's really what we're targeting. It's not any of the brands, because the brands always come and go, right. I mean, the sock cons, the AES Schneider. I mean, there's been many of Whoa, you know, we run an ad like extinction, right?
• 25:27
  Bryan Wagner: Extinction that's happening for sure that that's in every industry, but we work on us, mainly we work on us, and how do we get better? How do we like change our process? Look at our process, sometimes even internally, you like any family, you have disagreement, right?
• 25:45
  Bryan Wagner: You come back and you say, Okay, you were right. I was wrong.
• 25:48
  Bryan Wagner: Right. And I think that's what we're about, versus ideal customer, because we have to support that one inverter job, just like that. I think we've had some 1000 Burger jobs.
• 25:58
  Tim Montague: And I don't want to I don't want to belabor the point. But when you think about who's going to be here today, who are you excited about talking to? You could name a brand, but you could also name a type of individual? You know, is it is it the field engineers? Is it the project managers? Is it the procurement specialists? Who is it that that you're looking forward to interfacing with today?
• 26:22
  Bryan Wagner: I was just gonna say it's probably more about like, for me personally, you guys can go but you know, for me personally, it's more about all because all of those give us a different perspective and a different insight. You know, that project engineer we think, is probably this is the best for them, in terms of what we're doing because of the The product we're showing, I mean, we had a customer, right in this morning that their flight was delayed.
• 26:45
  Bryan Wagner: So they can't get into after the product part. And, you know, can you guys do it for us again?
• 26:51
  Bryan Wagner: Sure, of course, you everybody's gonna get different out of it.
• 26:55
  Bryan Wagner: But for us, I think it is all that come that make up how we improve?
• 27:00
  Anton Patton: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I mean, you know, the, the installers have everyone point of view that the engineers, the developers even and we really are excited about getting all of that feedback of looking at the different parts of a project and how it gets developed and seeing, at least on my team, the product side, you know, how can we take this feedback, bring it into our products, and how we support our products, and really meet the needs meet and provide solutions for any pain points there might be. So that's, that's what I'm excited about is really having those discussions on the technical side, getting feedback of what works, what is a challenge and how we can best provide solutions for it. Let's say I've
• 27:50
  Tim Montague: been designing and developing projects with central inverters, five megawatt inverters. What is the journey like for a company to embrace this concept of string after that legacy?
• 28:06
  Anton Patton: Yeah, so that's a conversation we have a lot with our customers with a lot of them. So someone who has designed, you know, with central inverters, we, we, as the applications, engineers will work with them closely. Looking at what products we supply, what equipment is out in the in the market today, how you can design systems with string inverters, how the architectures are different, but also the different options you have, and looking at the different engineering, you know, ways of designing a system, and we want to kind of take that journey with our customers as the partner, you know, as they look at their designs, how they might think about, okay, if I'm using string versus Central, you know, how the equipment's different, how the design would be different, and also looking at the benefits that they're going to get and communicating that with their customers or the system owners so that they can be successful with their projects and, and be able to sell and develop.
• 29:14
  Tim Montague: You mentioned solar plus storage, that's obviously a very hot topic, many different types of applications.
• 29:22
  Tim Montague: What are you seeing what is the pool that you're seeing from your customers, when it comes to solar and storage?
• 29:29
  Anton Patton: So I mean, solar plus storage is definitely, like you said, a hot topic. It's a big, I guess, push in this in the industry and a trend, I mean, there are different applications, different reasons for adding storage, could be resiliency, you know, having backup power available, it could also be the different energy rates that are that are changing the utilities or changing their their rate structures to have high cost of energy during peak hours, which this sun might not be out. So having energy storage to balance that out have higher, you know, revenue streams return on investments for customers, when you add stores to just solar PV. And that's why we we at CPS have had a big push to you know, add energy storage to our product portfolio. So
• 30:24
  Tim Montague: is it the CNI market, though that is going to be the beachhead for for CPS and storage.
• 30:30
  Bryan Wagner: That's our niche.
• 30:30
  Bryan Wagner: Yeah, I mean, that's what we're known for. I think that, as I mentioned, like a lot of the new companies trying to get in, or these monster companies that are trying to buy market share, it really won't work. The reason it won't work, is more to do with the operations. It's more to do with think of a central every time you ship one, your cost of operations go goes higher, right with a string. You know, you can't say that, you can't say that. So, you know, for us, it's more about as we look at batteries, you know, how will we look at the operation? So we're actually looking at the opposite of what you think from a product standpoint. You know, we're looking in the after life of when that products going into commissioning and things. So the hardest challenge for batteries has really been supply, you know, and that's because obviously, we're not on the manufacturing side, we are launching products that will effectively bring everything other than the battery cell to life of a solar plus storage example. But yeah, we're excited about mainly CNI today, but probably CNI. First. We've already deployed a bunch of systems, utilities, net And we're even announcing some other things here at the event. You know, past that. So
• 31:50
  Tim Montague: on the service side, do you want to say anything else about what you're looking forward to today?
• 31:55
  James Oswald: So just looking to talk to everybody, everyone has a different perspective on what they need a service or what they want from service. So we just taken that and your phone
• 32:05
  Tim Montague: number, presumably, yeah,
• 32:08
  James Oswald: I don't have that out. I don't know. Um, and I just see what they want, and then see how we can integrate it if we don't already have it integrated in our system, and what we may need to change or add, or, you know, our service has been growing by just added three people last week. So I mean, we're continuously growing and expanding as needed. So,
• 32:32
  Bryan Wagner: again, what we look at really is the percentages. So if you can add three people last week, why not?
• 32:40
  Bryan Wagner: That may not be the the way everyone thinks today, we have really, really run a lean company for a long time. So we're fortunate, right, and we really have put in a lot of work a ton of work, to to run it lean. So then when the right time to grow, and really add to that process.
• 33:02
  Tim Montague: Well, you mentioned the IRA legislation, right? We have we have a 10 year run now, right with a good ITC at 30%. And many other benefits.
• 33:08
  Tim Montague: And you see the impact already, right? The solar panel factories, the battery factories, the Evie charging, infrastructure, electrification of transportation, all of this is catching fire now in the United States, and the world is noticing. I had a Norwegian battery company on the show a couple of weeks ago, and they're building a factory in Georgia, a company called fryer. Americans have never heard of fryer, but now they're going to have a giga factory in Georgia, it's really an incredible time. The one of the key limiting factors in the energy transition is humans, right? We need more skilled labor, for installations. And we need more smart people doing the designs, engineering, sales, marketing, finance, tax accounting, etc, etc, etc.
• 33:59
  Tim Montague: Right? What do you guys say to future chin? Employees? Why should people notice Kinte? And come work for you?
• 34:06
  Anton Patton: Yeah, I mean, with the kind of ever changing solar industry, I mean, there's there's been so many different changes and changes and evolution. And, you know, it was a really exciting time for solar PV, I mean, there's going to be a huge amount of growth, for all the policy changes. And, you know, we had CPS, at least on the product side, you know, we to stay out of as a market leader, you know, we have evolved as well. And a lot of our team stays ahead of these changes, whether it's, you know, regulations, different interconnection, requirements, technology advancements, and we've really evolved our product line and solutions that we provide to the market to support kind of these these ever changing, you know, needs for solar PV, and that that's something that I get really excited about is being able to see what what else can we innovate? What else can we do to support this changing market because it is going to continue to evolve and grow. And we have definitely grown as well with it.
• 35:14
  Bryan Wagner: And I think it's all about jobs. I mean, that's what I would say to anyone looking at our company, I think, you know, in a recent job. We just posted we had 1500 applicants within a couple of weeks for one job. So I do think the demand is there, you're right for the growing industry, but it is about the humans, it's is about folks doing things. So I think you'll see maybe in the next few years, a consolidation of that you have so many fast growing companies. But again, what we talked about with running the operations, no company, no matter how big they are, you know, there's been many examples along the way I could use names, but I won't in our industry, that have been $30 billion companies, $40 billion companies, but then that PV division has exited because you can't just generate losses all day long. You have to generate profits. So that's what we're really good at. We're really good at having those that are leading are actually a lot of them are the ones doing the most work. That's the way we look at a lot of companies look at managers as you know, just managing now we look at our leaders as the ones working as hard as you know, just their team is and inspiring and teaching and coaching. So I think you'll you know, if you came in to CPS you'd learn a lot from all The different facets and and folks that we have, but we think it's all about jobs.
• 36:47
  Bryan Wagner: How do we create jobs? So he said he added three jobs last week. That's amazing. To hear is we don't always know. But you know, I think that's, that's what it's all about is giving those folks the opportunity to come in to learn to grow their career. I do think, you know, you mentioned something about the skilled labor. My father was a carpenter. I can't say enough how much that is, in such high demand in our country, in any field, right, the mechanics, the, you know, that's a different side of your brain, you know, and you have a lot of them in our company. They're brilliant, they're brilliant people. And, you know, to go out and everyday work with your hands, is, is an art, right? I mean, as you know, so I think there's going to be so many types of different jobs. And I think, you know, like real estate, you know, you have boom and bust, solar scene, it's cyclical periods, you know, last year was slightly down, this year is projected to be up. I mean, you can't, just because your project doesn't mean it will, right, so we got to go out, and we got to all make things happen. That's what we're excited to do this week is help our customers grow, deploy more projects, grow faster, add more jobs for their own companies.
• 37:59
  Bryan Wagner: And we think collectively, as a company like CPS, we're not adding the 100 jobs. In our team now, we're actually adding 1000s of jobs, construction jobs, right at the local level. So that's what we're excited about.
• 38:16
  Bryan Wagner: That's what keeps us really going.
• 38:18
  Tim Montague: It's a wonderful virtuous cycle. James, any final words about future employees or words to future employees of
• 38:28
  James Oswald: so we have a lot of younger engineers, we have some interns from engineering schools here in the Dallas area, different colleges, I tell them all the time, solar, just renewable energy, solar is just growing, busting at the seams, you have wide opportunity, you can pick and choose. And we'll bring in we start showing him a little different stuff here in the labs and training, getting some hands on on battery systems and stuff like that, and then where they go from there's just unimaginable, it's such a wide open field at this time that
• 39:04
  Tim Montague: we're gonna 10x the solar industry in the next 25 years. It is an amazing growth opportunity. So why did you get in? I got into PV in 2016. Okay, but I grew up doing solar thermal in my backyard and Albuquerque, New Mexico. So renewable energy is in my blood, and I just hit the ground running. But that's no, it was serendipitous, because we had great legislation happening in Illinois that when I
• 39:30
  Bryan Wagner: was in in 2008, there was really no real jobs.
• 39:33
  Bryan Wagner: There was maybe 10,000 people in the whole industry. So yep, 300,000 or so now.
• 39:38
  Tim Montague: Exactly. 300,000 amazing.
• 39:41
  Bryan Wagner: If you're right 10x would be unbelievable. But that's that's what our company is about. We're HOPE. We're hoping to bring more and more jobs to the US. You know, through all these different ways from engineering, construction, project management, you know, all the like, certainly manufacturing, but we're
• 39:58
  Tim Montague: out of time, but I want to say thank you so much for being here for having me here at the Richardson Texas facility. Good luck today with this customer event. It's really exciting. And to all our listeners, please check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify so that other people can find this content that is the best thing you can do when you find the Clean Power Hour and also go to tint power systems.com I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America.
• 40:31
  Tim Montague: The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 250 to 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts the 250 to 75 pairs well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions go to cin power systems.com To find out more