Latest / Clean Power Hour / How Solar Can Save Your Business Money Fast! EP290

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How Solar Can Save Your Business Money Fast! EP290 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Carl Moose: Again, the other thing I talk about Tim is freezing that variable monthly expense, right? If you can lock it any business, I don't care if it's a coffee shop, a sandwich shop or United Airlines, right?
• 0:59
  Carl Moose: Why do the airlines buy futures on fuel? Because they lock in that price. They know every time that jet takes off, they know exactly what their cost is. It's the same idea. When you go solar, you lock in that that variable expense, which is just smart business. So those are a couple of things that we talk about when we talk to the business owner.
• 1:21
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition here at the Clean Power Hour, our host, Tim Montague, bring you the best in solar, batteries and clean technologies. Every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization. We do too.
• 1:34
  intro: We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it together. We can speed the energy transition
• 1:47
  Tim Montague: today on the Clean Power Hour distributed energy here in the Midwest. Check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Please give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify, and be sure to follow us on YouTube. My guest today is Carl moose. He is a partner at Greenlight energy solutions, a solar developer and installer based in Chicago, Illinois. Welcome to the show.
• 2:10
  Tim Montague: Carl,
• 2:12
  Carl Moose: thank you, Tim, it's great to be here. It's heady days in
• 2:16
  Tim Montague: the Illinois market, as many of my listeners know, we have a about a 10 year runway of very healthy renewable energy credits driving the distributed generation or rooftop solar market, as we call it, and this fuels residential, commercial, small utility, meaning community solar, and there are carve outs for utility as well, but, but the main thing is DG, and that legislation that created that market is called the Climate and equitable JOBS Act, otherwise known as Seija, which was preceded by the future energy JOBS Act, which went into law back in 2016 as as my listeners also know, legislation is the foundation. Right, you have to have good legislation.
• 3:08
  Tim Montague: And many markets in the US now have good DG markets, but not all. So Carl, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. How did you come to the solar industry? Yeah,
• 3:18
  Carl Moose: no, it's, it's interesting. And we are based in Chicago. We have an office in Glen Ellen, which is one of the suburbs. But you know, I, I was a banker, and I got into commercial real estate, and back in oh four I was involved with a renewable energy company, sat on the board, raised some money, was a startup, and kind of got the bug, learned a lot about what was going on at that point.
• 3:40
  Carl Moose: I think Warren Buffet, at that time, was buying farmland in the Midwest and looking at converting it to wind and solar farms. So it was intriguing. I also have a degree from the University of New York in geology, so I've always been interested in Mother Earth and Energy and the sun and our solar system. So that's how I got into it. You know, Fast forward to about five, six years ago. You know, we started green light energy solutions, really, as a residential, commercial solar, you know, did you mention DG, EPC? You know, to install solar on primarily rooftops. You know, to help homeowners and commercial property owners take advantage of all the incentives.
• 4:20
  Carl Moose: You know, not only on the federal level, with the ITCs, but also, as you mentioned, the very favorable environment here in Illinois.
• 4:31
  Tim Montague: Yeah, and real estate is a great background for solar, because solar is real estate, right? You're putting solar panels on the roof or the ground next to a facility, it takes up real estate. It is there for real estate. It becomes part of the building.
• 4:45
  Tim Montague: It's a major upgrade to the building if you're putting it on as rooftop solar. And while that works, there are many nuances to this. As our developer and installer friends know, the biggest challenge in rooftop solar, Carl, in my opinion, is roof condition. Many rooftops are too old to solarize, and so you need to upgrade the roof or replace the roof. I'm curious right out of the gate, how do you work with whether it's a homeowner or a facility owner for commercial to overcome that major obstacle?
• 5:23
  Carl Moose: Yeah, and it is a major obstacle. Probably 50% of the roofs that we take a look at, Tim do need to be reconditioned. You know, we're not going to put a system that's going to be up there for 20 for 2530, years on a roof that's only got 10 years life left on it. So, you know, really, if a roof is more than five to eight years old, depending on the material the roof and the condition of the roof, we've got to do something with that roof.
• 5:45
  Carl Moose: Because, again, the last thing you want to do is put solar up top, and have to. Remove that, because you have some challenges with the roof. So it is, it is a challenge. Now we've done correctly, depending on the offset and how big the roof is and how much energy and everything else. There are some, there are some programs where you can roll apart, or all of the cost of the roof into the project, but it has to be part of the project, which means the roof has to be reflective. There has to be some other hurdles to get over, and typically you've got to use a bifacial panel, which is going to have some significant benefit to the reflective nature of that roof.
• 6:22
  Carl Moose: So the roofs are definitely a concern. And as I mentioned, about half the time when we do our site survey, we recommend that you, you know, we're not going to put solar on a roof that's compromised Period, end of story.
• 6:37
  Tim Montague: Yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned integrating the roof into the solar project, so to speak, making it a solar roof, and then leveraging the tax credit the ITC on the roof.
• 6:49
  Tim Montague: You can do this. Check out a project that we've documented on the show here several times with Mr. Murphy, the CEO of Simmons knife. And saw where they did a re roof. We installed a fully attached solar array on that roof, whereas typically we would do ballasted flat roof in the Midwest, we did fully attached.
• 7:11
  Tim Montague: And what this does is it says, hey, the solar is part of the roof, and you can then take the ITC on that portion of the roof that is now solarized. And it's a good thing because an old roof getting replaced. Okay, if you have an old roof, that can be a deal killer, and it does, in many time, in many cases, kill the deal. And then if you're going to re roof, that comes at a price. It's not as expensive as a solar array, but it's non trivial to replace a roof or augment a roof. And so being able to take that 30% ITC as much as 50 or 60% even if the stars fully align and you get the low income and the energy adder and the domestic content adders. But Carl paint us a picture what is going on in rooftop solar in the Midwest.
• 8:09
  Tim Montague: And if you want to just focus on Illinois, that's fine. But if you're working in other markets, please comment on those as well, just with some broad strokes, what is it that's driving the market?
• 8:19
  Carl Moose: Yeah, primarily we do work in Illinois. You know the bordering states for Illinois, you know Michigan has some good programs. Ohio, which is one state over, they have some good programs. Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, not so much.
• 8:32
  Carl Moose: Kentucky, not so much. So we primarily focus on Illinois.
• 8:36
  Carl Moose: And, you know, it's interesting, because, you know, most people don't think of Illinois as a good solar state, but at the end of the day, you know, I use the analogy. If you've ever been to Florida in July, you know, the beaches are empty at noon because you'll get burnt to a crisp. Or if you've ever left your cell phone on your dashboard, it overheats. Well, you know, panels down in some of those southern areas, like Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California, they can overheat in the prime sunshine part of the year, where Illinois, we don't have that problem. So Illinois has a good solar resource. At our latitude, we get a good eight months of production. You know, four months are low production, the November, December, January, February, but we get eight months and because in Illinois, we have that net metering through comed, which is an Exelon company, any system over 100 KW, you're still at that one for one net metering. So you can build up those credits during the eight months high production months to accommodate the low production months. So, you know, definitely in the Midwest, that latitudinal bound, you know, stretch, we get good solar resource across that across the region, from coast to coast. So that plays into it. And as you mentioned, Tim, you know, the incentives. You know, our Springfield is our capital, our legislation down there is very renewable friendly. In Northern Illinois, we have comed, which is an excellent company. They are very renewable supportive.
• 10:00
  Carl Moose: So, you know, all of those stars line up, certainly in Illinois.
• 10:03
  Carl Moose: And then we have the S Rex, you know, Illinois as a block methodology for the S Rex. So they're, they're contracted.
• 10:12
  Carl Moose: They pay out quarterly, you know, over a seven year period, typically. So it's just a good environment for solar. And of course, you know, if I'm a business person, you know, how can I maximize my building?
• 10:23
  Carl Moose: Right? If I'm running a plastic injection molding company or a die cutting or a food warehouse, my building is a necessary evil.
• 10:30
  Carl Moose: So how can I maximize that?
• 10:33
  Carl Moose: Well, I tell people, take your roof, which is typically a liability for most buildings.
• 10:36
  Carl Moose: Unless you're the United Center, or, you know, the Rosemont horizon, no one's paying you for that real estate. So turn that liability into an asset by producing energy number one.
• 10:46
  Carl Moose: Number two, take your variable monthly expense, your electric.
• 10:49
  Carl Moose: Which is oftentimes one of your top three to five expenses, and fix it, because it's variable, right? It goes up based on your usage and based on what the utility companies are charging you. So take that variable expense and fix it, and then the third thing is use federal state utility money to do it. So it's liabilities becoming assets fixed variable expenses becoming fixed and using federal state utility money to do it. And in Illinois, there's just a really good argument to that, you know, to that strategy. So for for business owners, it's really a conversation. It's not really a conversation about solar, per se. It's a conversation about, how can you maximize your building, right? And and again, you know, liabilities become assets, variable expenses become fixed using federal, state utility money.
• 11:37
  Tim Montague: Yeah. So if you're listening to this and you're a facility owner or you work for a facility owner, what Carl is saying is that you can monetize your roof. Traditionally, the roof is good for keeping rain and weather out of the building, and everybody needs a roof on their building. Now you can turn the roof into a cash machine, basically, and reduce your power bill by 50 to 75% with solar PV.
• 12:03
  Tim Montague: This is technology that converts sunlight to electricity which runs into the grid, and if your building over produces, let's say, on a Sunday, when your facility is closed, that money or those electrons flow onto the grid and are used elsewhere, and you get credit for those. That's called net metering. Now net metering is being scaled back in Illinois, we did have a step down here in 2025 we we had a major step down in a couple years ago in California, and that caused the resi market to for lack of a better expression tank. So net metering is influential when you reduce net metering. And I would refer my listeners to my conversation with burchi Andrew birch, the founder of Open Solar, about this, but when you reduce net metering, what that does is it incentivizes storage, and if you're not doing commercial or residential storage, please reach out to me. I can help you grab on to that, because storage is a major opportunity. It is a capital expense, and it you know, you have to figure out how to finance these projects. But the ROI is even sweeter, and we have a special incentive in Illinois, $250 per kWh for storage. But anyway, back to monetizing your roof. That's what this is about, and it is an important strategy for facility owners to get into. I always lead with this, right? If I'm talking to a facility owner that this is about saving you money.
• 13:47
  Tim Montague: Everybody wants to save money, Carl, don't they? Absolutely,
• 13:50
  Carl Moose: that's it. And if you're a business person, it's all about you know how it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep right and if you can reduce that electric bill. And again, where we start Tim is with the electric bill. We whether it's a residential application or commercial, all we need to do is take a look at your electric bill. Our design guys, at no cost, no obligation, will come up with a design.
• 14:09
  Carl Moose: They'll do a rendering your building, and we produce a six or seven page document that talks about all the incentives, talks about the cost, talks about the production, talks about the warranties. You know, a 15 year projection shows you where your break even point is, so that that business owner or property owner or homeowner can really take a look and make an educated decision. And you know, it's not for everybody. I mean, you know, there's some areas in, I don't know how familiar with Chicago, but on the north shore of Chicago you have some big homes that have pretty complicated roofs, and they have big trees. So, you know, it's just harder to make that work up there. You know, on the residential side, commercial, anybody that's ever flown into O'Hare, all you got to do is look out the window as you're flying in. The airport is surrounded by millions of square feet of roof space, and every single one of those roofs is a potential place to put solar.
• 15:51
  Carl Moose: And again, you know, how do you turn that real estate, that roof, real estate, you know, from being a liability, into an asset? Well, one way is to energize it with solar.
• 16:02
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it's, you know, it's still a minority of facilities that have solar on them, or have even considered putting solar on them, but in 10 and then 20 years, solar is going to be everywhere, right?
• 16:17
  Tim Montague: It is going to completely go mainstream. We see this in places like Northern Europe and even China, where it's just becoming part and parcel of the built environment here in the US. Go ahead,
• 16:34
  Carl Moose: yeah, one of the other things I talk about is, you know, what's really driving panel technologies is satellite technology. You know, 10 years ago, Tim, as you. We only had about 1000 satellites, roughly up in space. Now there's over 10,000 and all of those satellites, or the vast majority, if not all of them, are powered by solar, right? So when you put something up in space, it costs you 10s of millions of dollars, and it's you want it to stay up there for a long time. Well, those solar panels, those satellites, aren't plugged into anything, and nobody's up there doing maintenance on them. So those have to be very light, very effective, very efficient and long lasting. Well, all that space age technology is now trickling down to the rooftop.
• 17:12
  Carl Moose: So the panels that we're installing, you know, today are space age technology from 10 years ago. So it is becoming more ubiquitous. It is becoming more popular. And, you know, certainly in the Midwest, people are starting to catch on, because, you know, energy costs are not going down, right? I mean, with AI and all the computing and the data centers and you know, the satellites, and you know, the call that we're on right now is going up, you know, the signals going to the satellite and back, we're using more and more energy, and the grid is not getting any younger, so the power companies are looking for that. DG, right?
• 17:47
  Carl Moose: How can I take a 600,000 square foot facility, you know, in Elk Grove village or bensonville, which are suburbs right by the airport, and take it off the grid, or have it produce energy so that I don't, you know, as the power company, I don't have to go out and build some more capacity, right? So the trend is going that, you know, this has been around for a long time. You know, I think the momentum now is greater than it's ever been, and we're going to see more and more of it. And certainly in the Midwest,
• 18:14
  Tim Montague: the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one, three phase string inverter with over eight gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS product lineup includes string inverters ranging from 25 kW to 350 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 350 KW is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts. CPS is the world's most bankable inverter brand, and is America's number one choice for solar plants, now offering solutions for commercial utility ESS and balance of system requirements go to Chintpowersystems.com or call 855-584-7168, to find out more. So let's talk about how we talk to customers, about the value proposition. We We talked a little bit about monetizing your roof, and then let's talk about green light energy, because I want to hear more about your company. But you know, the way I I explain this is, you buy some technology that you put on your roof, it then produces energy, which reduces your energy bill. And so there's a CapEx on the front end.
• 19:29
  Tim Montague: There's savings over time, there's incentives that are paying back the project is cash positive in four or five years now, with the incentives that we have in Illinois, it's a combination of state and federal, right? And then it's just a cash machine. The money put in is oftentimes equal to approximately the 20 year savings of the project. So if you put in half a million dollars. It's paid back in four years, and then you're going to save another half a million dollars over the next 15 years.
• 20:08
  Tim Montague: How do you like to propose this, though, or explain this in simple terms to facility owners?
• 20:15
  Carl Moose: Well, you know, that's a good what you just said is a great place to start. You know, one of the challenges that capex budget, right? You know, where do you have a budget for this? And you know, as far as the federal tax credit, you know, if you're at 30% or 40% you know, keep in mind that those corporations, you know, their CFO, is escrowing, typically, on a quarterly basis, those tax payments, right? And so rather than putting that money in escrow, out of your profits, you can apply that and invest that into a solar system, right? And you could calculate that so that a year from now, when the ITCs kick in and it's time to pay Uncle Sam, rather than dipping into your escrow, you can use that credit. So that's one one conversation. The other one is, you know how long you're gonna be in the building?
• 20:57
  Carl Moose: You know if you plan on being in the building for 1020, years, maybe you're going to your succession plan is to give this to the kids or sell it to the employees. You're investing in that piece of property to make it more efficient. And remember, we use a very conservative 3% escalator, but if you look historically over the last 20 years, electric rates have gone up significantly more than that.
• 21:23
  Carl Moose: So when you project out, you know, 10 years from now, what your electric bill is going to be compared to today, it really starts to make sense. And you know, I always use the analogy, you know, if I could have locked in the price of gasoline, you know, back in when I started driving, back in the 70s, you know, I, you know, I'd be paying, you know, 30 cents a gallon instead of $3 a gallon.
• 21:39
  Carl Moose: So it's kind of the same. Thing, you know, you're, you're making that investment of and hedging against the cost of energy, which we know is not going down, it's going up, right? And so that's, it's just a good move, right? It's a smart move. And again, the other thing I talk about Tim is, you know, freezing that variable monthly expense, right? If you can lock it, you know, any business, I don't care if it's a coffee shop, a sandwich shop, or United Airlines, right? Why do the airlines buy futures on fuel?
• 22:06
  Carl Moose: Because they lock in that price.
• 22:06
  Carl Moose: They know every time that jet takes off, they know exactly what their cost is. It's the same idea. When you go solar, you lock in that that variable expense, which is just smart business. So those are a couple of things that we talk about when we talk to the business owner.
• 22:24
  Tim Montague: Yeah, you know that expression Death and Taxes are the only certainties in life. And in the case of taxes, rather than pay those taxes to the government, you can then invest those taxes in your own facility as a credit, and that's a way to reduce your tax burden, which I think is very compelling. And then, of course, there's just the raw savings, right? You're getting electricity from sunshine. The fuel for that is free. It's photons. We're we're raining down five to 10,000 times more photons than all of society consumes on an annual basis. So we're literally swimming in energy. So, Carl, you want to say something about that? Yeah, there's
• 23:11
  Carl Moose: no lack of energy. I mean, everything in our universe, or I'm sorry, our solar system is derived from the sun, including the energy it takes for me to talk to you, right? So why are we digging up 600 million year old plants and animals that that derive their energy from the sun, 600 million years ago, we're digging it up.
• 23:26
  Carl Moose: We're paying whoever owns it.
• 23:29
  Carl Moose: We're shipping it on railroads, you know, to a processing plant.
• 23:32
  Carl Moose: We're processing it, then we're burning it, which pollutes the environment, to produce energy, to produce steam, to turn a turbine that turns a generator, just to send it all the way down and transmit it all the way down to the homeowner, which, by the way, only 25 or 30% of that energy actually makes it to your wall. So Right? It just makes sense to me, like, capture it, convert it. We're at the source.
• 23:51
  Carl Moose: As you mentioned. You know, in the amount of time that we do this podcast, the earth gets hit with enough solar energy to satisfy 100% of human consumption. So why not capture it and convert it right where we hit it. And to your point, the photons are free where you know, the energy is free. It's the capitalization and capture. But again, typically five to seven years into it, you're you're at your break even point, so now you're ahead of the curve.
• 24:18
  Tim Montague: I love it. So let's talk about green light.
• 24:21
  Tim Montague: You know, we have a growing cadre of solar installers here in Illinois. Some of them are indigenous companies that have been born and bred in Illinois, and some of them have come from other markets. Because, let's face it, Illinois is a growth market. It's a growing solar industry. We're a, you know, we're in the top 10 DG markets across the US. Tell us about green light. What was the inception of the company? And when you're sitting across the table from a facility owner, how do you differentiate yourselves from the other installers and EPCs out there? Yeah, great
• 25:01
  Carl Moose: question. So my partner, Joe. He started green light, green light Construction Group, I believe, 22 years ago.
• 25:09
  Carl Moose: So Joe was my contractor when I owned my real estate. And as you know, when you find a good contractor, you stick with him.
• 25:15
  Carl Moose: And Joe is a he's a government contractor. He does everything from build design ground up.
• 25:18
  Carl Moose: He's done airports, marinas. He gets on government contracts.
• 25:22
  Carl Moose: And he was the one that approached me and said, hey, you know, and one of his businesses, by the way, is roofing, right?
• 25:28
  Carl Moose: So, you know, he came to me and said, Hey, let's go grab some dinner. And he said, Hey, I'm getting sick and tired every time I put a roof on a building, I come back to do maintenance, and there's solar up. There he goes, I'm leaving money. I'm losing money. I'm leaving money on the roof. I said, Well, yeah, you probably are, Joe. So you know, we took about nine months, six nine months, did a lot of research, kissed a lot of frogs, talked to a lot of people, and we launched green light energy solutions about five, just, just under five years ago, right?
• 25:54
  Carl Moose: And, you know, we're an EPC, we're we do full design, you know, procurement, construction.
• 26:02
  Carl Moose: We're registered with the ICC.
• 26:02
  Carl Moose: We're registered with the clearing houses for the S Rex.
• 26:06
  Carl Moose: We manage all that, you know, comed. We're a certified vendor with comed. So we went through the process for all that, because, as you know, to qualify for the federal programs, you've got to, you know, meet certain criteria and thresholds. So, you know, we took a couple years doing all that. It's expensive.
• 26:23
  Carl Moose: It's time consuming. You got to have the, you know, Master electricians on staff, and the structural engineers and all that kind of thing and and then, of course, the the individuals that that know what they're doing when they get up on the roof. So, you know, that's been the evolution of green light energy. Green light energy is a.
• 26:42
  Carl Moose: A subsidiary of green light Construction Group. And, you know, again, we're, you know, we're growing the residential business. Joe basically manages the residential business. I manage a commercial business.
• 26:52
  Carl Moose: We've hired on a new sales manager over there, and we've got about eight people that are experienced. We won't work with anybody that doesn't have at least three or four years track record in solar, because we're, you know, we're interested in dealing with, you know, professionals. They represent our brand, and Joe and I are active in the business. I mean, this is what we do. You know, if you need, if you have a problem, we can solve it again. Joe has a roofing company, so, you know, if somebody needs a new roof, we could certainly do that work for them. And we can do the analysis. If they've got their own roofer, that's okay, too.
• 27:25
  Carl Moose: But at the end of the day, the two companies work together to make sure that the the customer experience is what they you know upon beyond their expectations.
• 27:32
  Carl Moose: And again, you know we, you know we're we understand. You know there's always going to be issues, there's always going to be challenges, but you know who you're going to call when you have a when you have a problem.
• 27:42
  Carl Moose: You can talk directly to the owners of the company.
• 27:45
  Tim Montague: I think having a construction background really helps. I did not have that when I came to the industry, and that's why I went to work for a big contractor called continental up in Chicagoland.
• 27:55
  Tim Montague: They were an electrical installer, electrical contractor that got into solar, and that's not uncommon that, you know, because it's electricity. But really, no matter what the trade, whether you're a general contractor, mechanical, electric, even on the labor side, but knowing how to work with, you know, designing and permitting projects that helps you. Mentioned technology. Carl, you know how the technology that we're installing on rooftops is trickling down from the space industry? And that's absolutely true. The technology is quite different, right? We're using much more mainstream, affordable technology on rooftop solar. The technology has been around for 70 plus years now. So it is truly mature technology. It's always getting better. And you know, we're in that technology adoption curve where the more people that install solar, the more affordable it gets. But what do you think is important for facility owners or prosumers, for that matter, to understand about solar technology. There's, you know, there's three major components, there's the panels, there's the racking, and there's the inverters that are converting the DC power to the AC. But how do you explain the technology side of this industry to your customers? Yeah,
• 29:22
  Carl Moose: well, all three of those are very important, you know, the panels, the racking, and the inverters, and you could certainly cut, cut corners on all those, you know, for us, we take the approach of work. We're the middle of the road. We're not going to be the least expensive out there. We're not going to be the most expensive.
• 29:34
  Carl Moose: You know, I kind of use the car analogy. I drive an American car. So I, you know, I use the analogy of a Chevrolet. And I have nothing against Chevrolet.
• 29:42
  Carl Moose: I'm just simply saying, you know, it's, it's, it's not a Rolls Royce, right? Or a Lamborghini. And we kind of look at us as being the Audi or the BMW, Mercedes, you know, you know a quality car that's going to, you're going to pay a good price for, but it's a quality car. And again, not to say that Chevrolet's not a quality car, but you understand what I mean with regard to panels. The way I explain it is, I use the analogy of tires, right? So you've got the two and 300 series panels, you got the 400 series panels, and then you've got the 500 and higher series panels, kind of like tires, you know, if you go to a discount tire store, you know, you might buy a 40 or 50,000 mile tire. You're going to pay less for that, right?
• 30:19
  Carl Moose: That's that lower end panel, that two or 300 series you know, you're not going to put a, you know, an $800 tire on a car that you're only going to keep for three years. You know, if you own a Lamborghini or a more expensive car, you're going to buy that more expensive panel or tire, which, in this analogy, is that five or 600 series. We use the 400 series panels. It's usually a 460 or above that, you know, goes up maybe sometimes the 510, series. So we use a high quality panel that's going to be efficient for the square footage, and usually is a by facial right? So that's the first thing. The racking is very important as well. You know, typically we do custom racking.
• 30:55
  Carl Moose: We'll go out during our site survey, our structural guy will go out, our project manager will go out. And we typically do custom, custom panel, or, I'm sorry, racking, depending on what's the roof, what's going on with the roof. And again, that adds a little bit of time to the delivery and a little bit of cost, but we think it's, it makes sense, right? Rather than an off the shelf, cheap racking, right? And then, of course, the inverters, you know, we use SMA and 40s, I think it is the the French company, I can't remember offhand, but you know that we use a high quality inverter, because that's, that's really the weak link in the system, right? The panels are going to last for a long time, right? The racking is going to last for a long time. The inverter is kind of that weak link in the chain.
• 31:37
  Carl Moose: You know, typically, you know, 1215, years into it, you've got, you've got a, you. Probably gonna have to repay replace an inverter. So we, again, we we use the highest quality inverters that we can get, because, you know, again, we don't want any problems for as long as as we can
• 31:54
  Tim Montague: well. Carl, thank you for that explanation. I wholeheartedly agree. Use quality products and you'll have happy customers for a long solar project lifetime. Carl, in our last few minutes together, what else should our listeners know about green light, or yourself or the industry that we're all in, that solar coaster that we're riding? What else would you like our listeners to know?
• 32:21
  Carl Moose: Well, you know about green light. You know, Joe and I take our business seriously. Our kids are involved. You know, we're we've been around for a while. We're not going anywhere.
• 32:31
  Carl Moose: And, you know, we take responsibility for our projects from start to finish. So, you know, with regard, with that regard, the majority of our business, Tim is referral business. So we get a lot of referrals. We do a lot of networking. We sit on the boards of a couple of different associations. And, you know, we're pretty well known in the, you know, Northern Illinois or Chicago area, you know, as far as solar, you know, as soon as you say solar, people, they have some preconceived notions, you know, and and again, at the end of the day, I like to explain it is, it's the source of energy. I mean, you know, the energy is the day the sun stops shining, we've got big problems, right?
• 33:04
  Carl Moose: So, you know, and to think about it, you know, if you believe the sun's been around for four or four and a half billion years, it hasn't taken a day off. I mean, it's never turned its switch off, and it's always shining somewhere. So why not capture that? Why not convert that and turn that into electricity? Because it's available, you know, to almost everybody. Now, of course, there's scenarios where you don't get good sun, or you've got shading, or, you know, what have you, but for Mo, for most people, it's something to consider. And again, as I mentioned earlier, you know, there are some installations where it just doesn't pan out.
• 33:36
  Carl Moose: It doesn't work because the roof orientation, or the size of the roof, or the design of the roof, or there may be trees and shading, but it's worth taking a look at. You know, for most people that own their home or on their their business, because for most of it, it does make sense.
• 33:51
  Tim Montague: Well said, Well, I want to thank Carl moose of green light energy solutions for coming on the show. Please check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and review. Tell a friend about the show, follow me on YouTube and reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love connecting with my listeners. Carl, how can our listeners find you?
• 34:10
  Carl Moose: Yeah, so our website is www dot Greenlight energy, dot solar, and my email is simply my first name. Carl, with a C at Greenlightenergy.solar, you know, feel free to send us an email again. If you're in Northern Illinois, Michigan or Ohio and you want us to take a look at a project, all we really need is is the address and your electric bill, and we can do a no cost, no obligation assessment and give you the information so that you can make an educated decision.
• 34:40
  Tim Montague: Thank you so much.
• 34:40
  Tim Montague: I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Take care.
• 34:43
  Tim Montague: Thank you, Tim, the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over eight gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS product lineup includes string inverters ranging from 25 kW to 350 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS, 350 KW is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts. CPS is the world's most bankable inverter brand and is America's number one choice for solar plants now offering solutions for commercial utility ESS and balance of system requirements go to Chintpowersystems.com or call 855-584-7168, to find out more, you.