Latest / Clean Power Hour / What 16 Years of Solar Development Taught Me | Brad Stutzman #331

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What 16 Years of Solar Development Taught Me | Brad Stutzman #331 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Brad Stutzman: Yeah. So, you know, think about if someone would have told you 10 years ago that we're going to build a solar, you know, facility, but it's just going to be flat on the ground. We're going to add no tilt to the solar panels at all. Everybody would think you were crazy, right? And now that, you know, it's like everybody's, you know, everybody's doing that with the Earth, oh, system. And it makes sense, just because the industry's changed, the cost of modules has come down so much.
• 1:16
  Brad Stutzman: But 10 years ago, everybody would have thought you were crazy if you were doing that, you know. So, you know, things like that are the changes that I love about this industry. You know, it's just things just totally outside of the box come into play, and you're like, Wow, that is a good idea.
• 1:31
  intro: Now, 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.
• 1:42
  intro: We do too. 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
• 1:58
  Tim Montague: today on the Clean Power Hour, I'm joined by someone who really understands how to turn clean energy ambition into projects that actually get built. My guest is Brad Stutzman. He's the founder and CEO of 03 energy in Dallas, Texas, and Brad launched 03 back in 2012 So over the past 16 years, he's led the development and deployment of hundreds of on site solar projects across commercial, municipal and nonprofit customers. I'm so thrilled to have you on the show. Welcome, Brad.
• 2:31
  Brad Stutzman: Yeah, thanks for having me. Tim.
• 2:33
  Tim Montague: So here we are in January. We're about to get walloped by a big storm across the Southwest, the Midwest and the Northeast and but the the bigger backdrop is the grid is, is a very dynamic thing. It is the machine that gives us the good life that we have, electricity, HVAC, heat pumps, etc, etc. I'm curious, though, Brad, how did you get interested in solar and now solar and batteries?
• 3:09
  Brad Stutzman: Yes, so I kind of fell into the industry. I had a company that was putting together the financing for construction and development projects in the real estate realm. So, you know, we were focused on that. We were working with developers, structuring and sourcing their capital for their projects. And in 2009 was really whenever the Great Recession hit Texas, and with that, there was no banks, no lenders, funding construction projects at all. So what we did was, at that time Obama came out with the American Recovery Act, it had a lot of incentives, like the 1603 grant for renewable energy projects.
• 3:54
  Brad Stutzman: And a lot of the developers that we were working with had large tracts of land that they had already acquired or had under contract. We're trying to figure out what to do with these tracts of land. And so we started looking at energy projects, renewable energy projects on that land, putting together the financing for those so we learned how to structure the financing for like a solar or wind project, using the 1603 grant or the ITC, depending on what which the developer wanted to Take. But it was mostly 1603 grant and started putting together the financing for those projects. Once you put together the financing, the development side, I feel like is is easy.
• 4:41
  Brad Stutzman: You can just kind of roll into that, because seems like 90% of the development is putting together the financing. So just came at it that way, and I've just, you know, I kind of stumbled into the industry, fell in love with it, and I've been here ever since.
• 4:57
  Tim Montague: So having been in the industry now for 16 years, that gives you a very good perspective on how, how dynamic it is. We we are riding the solar coaster. It is, it is very dynamic, and it is very regional. Someday, solar will be on every roof, on every building, on every roadside. But today, we're, you know, we're, we're stretching to reach, I think, 10% of grid power from solar. In some states like California, we're approaching 100% on sunny, windy days, okay, but in most markets, it's a fraction of grid power. Notably in Texas, we also have a 50.
• 5:47
  Tim Montague: Percent wind and wind and solar and battery powered grid now, thanks to what ERCOT has done to incentivize those DG resources.
• 5:58
  Tim Montague: But tell us. Tell us a little bit about how you see that the regional aspects of the market, and how do you ride these ups and downs? Yeah.
• 6:15
  Brad Stutzman: So we attack projects on a national level and now on a somewhat international level, because we've got projects in Mexico as well. But you know, every You're right.
• 6:28
  Brad Stutzman: Every region has its pros and its cons. We like to evaluate the region. Take a look at the incentives in that region, the financing, the solar resource as well, because that's a big determinant. You know, you go up in the Northeast, the solar resource is definitely not as strong as in the southwest. And, you know, evaluating all that we like to come into the projects and take a look at, at the end of the day, what the return on investment is, and, you know, approach it from that standpoint. You know, there's always a learning curve, and you always got to keep up to date with, you know, the different regulations and the different areas. But you know, if you work with a good, you know, law firm in that area, a lot of times they can assist you with that.
• 7:13
  Tim Montague: You have an expression practical innovation.
• 7:17
  Tim Montague: Tell me about that. What does that mean for you?
• 7:21
  Brad Stutzman: I mean innovate, but on a practical level, right?
• 7:25
  Brad Stutzman: You know, make sure that everything that you're innovating is within the business, is something that's going to bring value to the business. And you're not just innovating for the sake of innovating. You know, you need to make sure that you're, you're able to, you know, recoup some sort of ROI on that innovation.
• 7:43
  Tim Montague: I guess that brings to mind risk tolerance.
• 7:46
  Tim Montague: You know, solar development is a risky business. Only some fraction of projects that you start to sink your teeth into are going to see the light of day for a whole variety of reasons. How would you describe your company's risk tolerance, and how do you de risk opportunities?
• 8:09
  Brad Stutzman: Yeah, so from a development side, you know, development always has risk.
• 8:12
  Brad Stutzman: It's pretty much the riskiest part of of of you know, whether it's real estate, energy, whatever the development is, always the riskiest because there's so many unknown variables on the very front end.
• 8:27
  Brad Stutzman: You know, what we try to do is, you know, we try to work with, we try to de risk projects from multiple ways, on the development side, a lot of times through partnering with local groups that have maybe taken a project to a certain point and coming in and CO developing it with them past that point, that takes out some of the risk for us. Also a lot of our projects that we work on are behind the meter projects, so on site generation, so that helps with that development as well, because you're not having to deal with, you know, environmentals, you know, phase one, phase two, it's already been done for the real estate.
• 9:07
  Brad Stutzman: So, you know, really, what we're talking about is looking at it from a financial aspect, and you can pencil that and take a look and see if it's a risk that you can mitigate or minimize.
• 9:23
  Tim Montague: It may be obvious to experienced developers like yourself, but what you just said about behind the meter on site solar really is a bit of an AHA like that is also the space that I'm most experienced in. I have also developed community solar front of the meter projects. But when you have an off taker right there, right that is a big deal.
• 9:45
  Tim Montague: So the development process is simpler. Some of the real estate complexities are taken out of the equation. Somebody already has site control. They've built a building, they have a load, and now you're just going to put something on their roof or in a field next to their facility and and you have a guaranteed off taker. Now making that pencil is another question, and then getting the project financed is also another, you know, a stage.
• 10:16
  Tim Montague: And, you know, obviously this is, this is one of the reasons why solar is regional, right?
• 10:31
  Tim Montague: We're we're stacking incentives, and here in Illinois, right, we have this thing called Rex renewable energy credits, which is a really juicy incentive, which greatly reduces the payback period for the project owner, and it also juices our ability to offer. Customer a very low cost PPA. A few years ago, I was offering industrial customers a two cent PPA in Illinois, which is incredible.
• 11:51
  Tim Montague: Nowadays we're offering maybe a six cent PPA, even though we still have very good incentives.
• 12:01
  Tim Montague: But things are different. The cost of construction is higher, the ITC is fading. You know, things are dynamic. But anyway, tell us a little bit, I guess, about just big picture. What is it that makes for a good project in your eyes?
• 12:24
  Brad Stutzman: Um, well, again, it's going to depend on, you know, what we're looking at, whether or not it's in front of the meter or behind the meter, right? First thing you're always going to want to look at is your potential ROI or IRR on the project. And then just start backing into it from that way.
• 12:42
  Brad Stutzman: You know, you the site itself is always going to be something that you need to evaluate. If it's in behind the meter projects, you know, do they have a big enough footprint to really offset their load? You know, we've worked with some groups that they had a huge facility, but their their roof wasn't really set up. You know, have a lot of mechanical on the roof.
• 13:03
  Brad Stutzman: So it wasn't really set up there. Maybe they had a parking garage and not a, you know, big parking lot. So, you know, at the end of the day, you know, you're looking at this large facility that's using a lot of electricity, but all you can really offset from the solar is like 5% of their load. That's probably not going to be something they're going to move with you on, just because they need a bigger impact than, you know, 5% offset. So, you know, those are things that you're going to want to evaluate on the front end. Whenever it comes to the site, can you get enough solar on the roof, on the parking lot, on an adjacent field, to really impact their energy usage there? And then, you know, the same thing with, you know, in front of the meter projects, you know, is the site going to be something that, you know, you can put a nice flat array on, you know? Is it going to take a lot of Earth work or dirt work to get it the site prepped for for solar, you know, is it on the side of a mountain, or is it just a flat field? So those are the things that you're going to want to look at on the front end from the the sites themselves.
• 14:14
  Tim Montague: It's a big country. Real Estate is a plenty, but good projects are few and far between. Relatively speaking, the stars have to align. This is hard for lay people to understand. I think, you know, especially when it comes to real estate, front of the meter development, like, right? I think local communities sometimes freak out at how many projects are getting initially permitted, per se. And what they don't understand is that only a fraction of those are going to see the light of day and actually get built. We only need 2% of the landscape to completely power all of the US grid, and we already have 6% of the landscape in built environment, roads, roads and buildings, etc. And of course, we can use some of that. So really, I like to, I like to put a pin in that the enemy of rural communities is urban sprawl more than anything, not energy development, but tell us a little bit about a success story. And you know, if you would pick and choose from a couple different markets, and just give us some examples of what have been really successful projects, 403,
• 15:39
  Brad Stutzman: yeah, sure. We did a project in, you know, California. It was, city was halfway between La San Diego, you know, they had one facility that needed a lot of electricity, and then a facility next door that didn't use that much electricity, but the facility next door had a huge parking lot because they had a fleet of vehicles. So, you know, we were able to come in, cover that, cover that parking lot, and then, you know, work with the city to to basically transmit the electricity from one building over to the other building, and run a line across and use solar that's, you know, setting on one building's parking lot to feed the other one. We also have one that we did. This was years ago, and in New Mexico, it was an old landfill. You can't really do anything on an old landfill.
• 16:34
  Brad Stutzman: Luckily, this old landfill was next to a big manufacturing facility that needed. A lot of electricity. We were able to come in. The landfill had already been capped. We had to prep the landfill site and, you know, put solar on the site and, and same thing transmitted across the street to plug into the building. So, but that was a great reuse of a brownfield site. You know, there's not really a whole lot that you can do with landfills. You know, you either use them as a golf course or as a park. There's you can't really build any sort of real real estate on them. So those are great uses for solar, because it just needs a flat area.
• 17:20
  Tim Montague: As my listeners know, I'm a huge fan of brownfield solar. We call it brownfields to bright fields in the industry. And I've had a couple of guests focused on this topic AC power. Also had the city of Urbana on the show where we talked about one of the very first projects I ever walked, which is the closed municipal landfill here in Urbana, which now has a, I think, a five megawatt community solar project on it. Those you know. So if you're listening to this and you're in a jurisdiction that has closed landfills, there's a difference closed versus open.
• 17:58
  Tim Montague: Open is still receiving waste and closed it's just sitting there. It's a hazard, it's a risk, it's it's a cost center for the community, and you may as well do something useful that generates revenue. I'm curious how long did it take to develop that landfill project?
• 18:18
  Brad Stutzman: That one took quite a while. The construction on it was probably about seven months, but the prep work on the front end was probably about a year, year and a half, just because of all of the studies that had to be done on the landfill, you know, to make sure that it wasn't going to leak anything. It was capped, and had been capped since the 70s. So, you know, it was, you know, how do we prep this site? Because it had, you know, I don't know, you probably know this, but your listeners may not. But you know, the the landfills, over time they they kind of digest and they break down. And so it starts off as a huge mound, and then, you know, over, you know, 30 years, it kind of recedes all the way, way flat. And we actually had to, you know, flatten it a bit more and bring in fill dirt on top of it to site, to prep the site some so, you know, there's a lot that goes into that dirt work and prepping for it, and just making sure that it's not going to affect anything else in the area, because it is a landfill, and you don't necessarily know what's in there. Know what's in there.
• 19:26
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it gets kind of lumpy as the garbage settles.
• 19:28
  Tim Montague: Yeah, and, and then you want to use ballasted racking, of course, so you're not penetrating the cap, which is totally doable. And it's, it's cool to see. If you haven't, you know, seen this. They they put gravel pads and then concrete, you know, blocks that hold the hold the racking, and it works.
• 19:56
  Tim Montague: I've also, you know, been aware of some problems and challenges.
• 20:01
  Tim Montague: One, one in particular, one project. There's a 60 megawatt project in Northern Illinois that we bid. We didn't, we didn't get to do the construction work, but I heard through the grapevine from an engineer that the contractor installed the wrong kind of gravel initially. Gravel comes in different flavors, and the gravel that they used wasn't grippy enough, and so the the gravel mounds were slipping and degrading, and there was quite a slope on one aspect of this. It was, it was a, it was a north facing slope of the landfill.
• 20:36
  Tim Montague: Anyway, they, they, they, they eventually figured it out. But complicated, the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over 10 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 Chint power systems.com or call 855-584-7168, to find out more. Yeah, so let's talk about some other aspects of your company. Brad, you know people make the world go round. Good talent is. Hard to find. We're in a fast growing industry.
• 21:44
  Tim Montague: There's, there's a talent war effectively in the solar industry. But talk to us a little bit about what you know.
• 21:52
  Tim Montague: How do you identify and then take care of and and maintain a, you know, a staff of project developers, project managers, engineers, what is, what is, what is your process and what works for? Oh, three, yeah.
• 22:14
  Brad Stutzman: So, you know, on top of the development, we also do construction services as well. So, you know, we can come in and as a cm or an EPC. We do that for our own projects. But then we have also started partnering with other developers that they don't want to do the construction, or just aren't familiar with the construction.
• 22:33
  Brad Stutzman: They just want to do the development work and have someone else come in and build it. So we've been doing a lot of those projects as well here lately, and then we've always done some asset management and maintenance for our own facilities, but we're really rolling that out moving forward with the way the industry is going to offer that more for third parties. So for, you know, building owners that may have solar on the roof, that the EPC went out of business, or there may be, you know, community scale solar project that, you know, somebody went bankrupt and they need a new, you know, a new maintenance or asset manager on it. So we're offering that to other groups as well right now.
• 23:18
  Brad Stutzman: From managing a team, you know, it's always about the people that you hire, right? You know, from now that I'm getting a bit older, I found that I want to hire people that I want to work with, right, that that I enjoy working with on a day to day, and that are capable, you know, you always want to make sure that you have a capable team that can actually, you know, actually handle the tasks in front of them, you know, the you can always hire individuals and teach them, but there's some things that you can't teach, you know, you can't teach work ethic. A lot of times you can't teach responsibility, you know?
• 23:56
  Brad Stutzman: So those are the things that you know, you look for in a good teammate, and then you can teach them the role within the solar industry,
• 24:05
  Tim Montague: yeah, that that saying getting the right people on the bus is super important, right and be slow to hire, quick to fire like I cannot emphasize enough, having the right people and having the wrong People will really drag you down and hold you back. So I'm very fond of having the right people on the bus, and I'm not opposed to hiring relatively inexperienced people. We have to remember that there aren't enough experienced solar professionals. We have to recruit from other industries, and of course, hiring new grads is a consideration. I do work with a couple of companies that are that are hiring fresh talent out of school, and I'm working with these young engineers and sales teams. And it's, it's great, because young people are a sponge. They are quick learners. I'm an old dog. And it's, it's, it's relatively slow going for me to learn new tricks, but when you're in your 20s, your brain just goes faster. And now we have AI, which is an accelerant. I'm curious, are you guys leaning into AI in any specific ways?
• 25:31
  Brad Stutzman: Yeah, we're actually using a lot of AI just for, I mean, day to day with, you know, documents, you know, marketing, things like that. But also, you know, you're starting to see it a lot, implemented into some of the solutions for solar. Like, there's some monitoring companies that are building AI into their their platforms now. So you can just ask the AI, hey, you know, why was the system not producing XYZ yesterday or the day before?
• 25:57
  Brad Stutzman: Yeah, and it's spitting out answers for you. So, you know, and that's real exciting, because I don't know, you know if you've ever gotten into some of these monitoring systems, but sometimes it's sensory overload with so much data, and you're digging through it, and it's like, you know, if you can cut down on that time for digging through data, it makes a lot of sense having an AI do something like that. Absolutely.
• 26:22
  Tim Montague: Yeah, if you have a lot of information, AI is very good at digesting that and sorting through that very quickly. I'm curious, you know when we when we talk about the next generation? What advice do you have for either. Are young entrepreneurs or young professionals that are coming into the industry. And I guess one way to think about this is, if you were starting fresh today, what would you do differently?
• 26:57
  Brad Stutzman: Ooh, I was starting fresh today. Yeah, I don't know what I would I don't know what I would do differently today, starting fresh, just because it's so it's such a different industry compared to years ago, you know, whenever I first got in the industry, a utility scale project was, you know, like $7 a watt to build, you know. And I think modules were like $3 a watt, you know, today is just totally different, and you learn from those experiences over time. But the things that I would say, you know, to anyone that's new getting into this industry or any other industry is, you know, don't be afraid to make mistakes. You know, they're only mistakes if you don't learn from them. So get out there. Don't be afraid. You know, learn from your mistakes and continue on moving past that. Just don't ever give up. You know, those are the those are, I think those are the keys to success in any industry.
• 27:52
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I, I often say that successful solar project development is a marathon. You have to be tenacious. You have to plant a lot of seeds and accept that not every project is going to be a good one. Not every customer is going to be a good customer for a variety of reasons. Not every site is going to be a good site.
• 28:16
  Tim Montague: Not every manufacturer or supplier that you work with is going to play out in a good way, but through patience, discipline, perseverance, you can and will likely succeed if you stick to it and learn from your mistakes. I like that saying a lot. So like to circle back to, you know, this 16 years now of experience that you have.
• 28:53
  Tim Montague: How have things changed? And how are things going to change as you see, as you look forward now into the next couple of years of our industry,
• 29:06
  Brad Stutzman: yeah, so, I mean, there's been a lot that's changed over the years, you know, and that's one of the things that makes this industry so fun, right? Is because it's always changing. There's not, and there's not a, you know, some other industries, you know, they're, you know, you know, you go into it and they say, Hey, we've done it like this for 100 years, 150 years, you know, we've already figured out all the best practices for everything in the solar industry. That's not necessarily the case. You know, one of my biggest, one of the biggest things that I always point to is, I don't know if you're familiar with earthos. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, you know, think about if someone would have told you 10 years ago that we're going to build a solar, you know, facility, but it's just going to be flat on the ground. We're going to add no tilt to the solar panels at all. Everybody would think you were crazy, right? And now that, you know, it's like everybody's, you know, everybody's doing that with the Earth, oh, system. And it makes sense. Just because the industry's changed, the cost of modules has come down so much.
• 30:08
  Brad Stutzman: But 10 years ago, everybody would have thought you were crazy if you were doing that, you know. So though, you know, things like that are the changes that I love about this industry.
• 30:17
  Brad Stutzman: You know, it's just things just totally outside of the box come into play and you're like, Wow, that is a good idea now,
• 30:24
  Tim Montague: yeah, as the cost of solar panels comes down, that does change how you can effectively engineer systems, right? I had an amazing conversation with Jim Tyler of earthos and and that is one of the key drivers there, that the cost of modules has come down, and it may it may. You know, we do a lot of trackers now in utility solar, anything like a megawatt or up, but as the cost of solar panels continue to decline, trackers could go away.
• 30:56
  Tim Montague: It there is no constant, except for change in the industry and and trackers could go away now.
• 31:07
  Tim Montague: Will earthos become a standard?
• 31:07
  Tim Montague: I don't know, right? It works really well in some geographies, in some climates. Will it work when you have three feet of snow in the winter? That could be a challenge. Have you? Have you touched on a earthos project, or really gone far down that rabbit hole?
• 31:29
  Brad Stutzman: Yeah, we're working on one right now, where the we're actually repowering.
• 31:33
  Brad Stutzman: It's actually that landfill that I mentioned. We're repowering that landfill because we were having so many Windish. Use, and we had a windstorm come through there and told us, wreak havoc on it. Oh, and with the ballasts. That's New Mexico, yeah. Okay, so with the ballasts and things like that, yeah. You know, we're trying to figure out ways that we can cut down on the wind issues. And one of the things that we, you know, really like, is the earth those system for that Sure, that's what we've been working to repower it with the earth those very
• 32:07
  Tim Montague: cool, yeah, the other stat that I love about earthos, that Jim gives is 35 tons less steel per megawatt, right? You know, there's a lot of steel in a fixed tilt or tracker system. And with earth those there's, there's no true racking, there's cabling. So the panels are strapped down to the ground with cables that run, you know, two cables each direction, so they are held down. But the the panels are flat on the ground, and that's a double edge. And some people go, Oh, no way, I can't. You know, the modules are going to get submersed, or they're going to get chewed on by rodents and but you know what they're driving towards is Penny a watt or penny a kilowatt hour. That is one of the missions that that Jim is on, and that, in his mind, unlocks green hydrogen. So anyway, Brad, what other forward looking, you know, trends or technologies, do you think we're going to see more of in the future?
• 33:22
  Brad Stutzman: Well, obviously batteries, batteries are going to continue to get cheaper, you know, they, you know, I think there's been a forecast that the new, what is it? They're calling it, was it renewable, base load power, right? The new form of renewable base load power is just going to be solar and batteries all over the place, and they've already done some studies now, which show that, you know, you can have parity with, you know, grid parity with solar and batteries in certain areas, and never have to, you know, use any other form of of energy generation. So I think we're going to see a lot of that moving forward, because that just makes sense.
• 34:03
  Tim Montague: Yeah, batteries and other forms of energy storage. I was reading today that Google is starting to develop compressed CO two storage projects with a company called energy dome. We had energy dome on the show a couple of years ago when they were unheard of in the US market.
• 34:26
  Tim Montague: They have a project now at scale in Italy. I don't know if they have any large projects yet in the US, but these are, like, I think, up to 60 megawatt hour solutions. And you're, you know, you're building a big dome like, you can think of it as like a sports facility. You see these dome tennis or soccer facilities. It looks just like that. And they're filling it with CO two and then compressing the CO two with, you know, solar or wind energy, right, running that compressor. And then you can drive a turbine by decompressing the gas at night or whenever you need that energy that you've now stored in the compressed tank. So yeah, I'm excited for energy storage. And what do you think about what do you think about data center, the the whole data center crisis that we're that we see happening, you know, it's driving up the cost of energy so many data centers coming onto the grid. Um, do you see any innovation there that you're interested in or excited about?
• 35:39
  Brad Stutzman: Um, I mean, I'm not personally involved with, uh, with a bunch of data centers. You know, I just read about it here and there, you know, now they're saying that they're going to start putting data centers in outer space. So, yes, they are using them here, you know, using the electricity here on Earth. They're going to be 24 hour solar, run by solar up there. So, you know, who knows how long? You know, data centers on earth will be a thing. But, yeah, I mean, we haven't really done a whole lot with data centers yet. I just read about the trends and what's going on there.
• 36:11
  Tim Montague: So what is the what is the most unusual project that you've touched in the last decade? I mean, doing a brownfield project is pretty cool. Not many PCs have touched that type of project.
• 36:27
  Brad Stutzman: Yeah, that one actually the weirdest thing about that, we had to have so many sign offs from different groups. It was, you know, it's there in Albuquerque, and so it's near the, you know, where they store all the nuclear weapons. So we had to have a sign off from the Nuclear Regulatory Authority that somehow the sole. Or wasn't going to mess with the nuclear weapons there. Oh, wow,
• 36:48
  Tim Montague: so was that. Was that a but that was a municipal project.
• 36:53
  Brad Stutzman: No, no, no, no.
• 36:53
  Brad Stutzman: That was for a it was there. Do you know the Sandia Labs? Sure, yeah, it's right outside of Sandia Labs there.
• 37:04
  Tim Montague: But so the the client was the government,
• 37:07
  Brad Stutzman: no, the client that's a manufacturing facility there. They manufacture satellites and things like that.
• 37:13
  Brad Stutzman: Process. Got it government contractor,
• 37:18
  Tim Montague: yeah, I grew up in Albuquerque, so very familiar with Sandia Labs. All right.
• 37:20
  Tim Montague: Well, is there anything else you'd like our listeners to know about? Oh three energy. Brad, it was great seeing you. I think I got to hang out a little bit at Ari Vegas. And I am curious what, what are the trade shows that you like to be a regular at?
• 37:40
  Brad Stutzman: Yeah, I got to chase you down on one of these trade shows you ran away before I could get you to sign your book form.
• 37:48
  Tim Montague: I am always on the go, but I'll be I'll be at re I'll be at re Vegas. I'll be at inner solar in San Diego in February. I'll be going to some of the regional events. I'm going to go to ACP in Houston.
• 38:00
  Tim Montague: Going to go to Innovation Day.
• 38:05
  Tim Montague: We didn't get to say hi at Innovation Day. I don't know if you were there last year at CPS Innovation Day, but that's in your backyard.
• 38:11
  Brad Stutzman: I'll be there again this year. That's always a great thing. I mean, the I've worked with Chint for years, and love that group. I mean, we're looking at specking them in for projects right now. You know, astrology and then CPS for the the inverters, great company to
• 38:27
  Tim Montague: work with. Yeah, we're referring to CPS America, the three phase, the number one three phase string inverter company. They have a great mini conference in Dallas called Innovation Day this year. It's April, 22 to 24th you've you, you arrive, hopefully the night before, and then great conference all day on the 22nd and then part of the 23rd and then I think they're going to do a fundraiser on the 24th this year. So check that out. You can reach out to me or any of your Chint contacts for more information about that.
• 39:02
  Brad Stutzman: Yeah, they always do cool stuff that week.
• 39:05
  Tim Montague: Anything else we should know about? 03 Brad, no.
• 39:10
  Brad Stutzman: I mean, we're focused right now on developing, constructing and then maintenance and operations and asset management, always looking for new groups to partner with on projects. So definitely, would love for anyone in the industry that I don't already know to reach out the you know, our contact information, our website is O3energy.com, so the letter o, number three energy com. It's the same thing on all the social media platforms.
• 39:38
  Tim Montague: And what are the priority states for you?
• 39:41
  Tim Montague: Typically?
• 39:42
  Brad Stutzman: Well, I mean, we'll, attack any state, if it makes sense for us.
• 39:44
  Brad Stutzman: Traditionally, we've been in the southwest. We've also attacked the islands, like Hawaii, Guam we're in Mexico right now. We have established business in Mexico. When we've got our first few projects down there, they're starting construction. But yeah, we'll take a look at any state that makes sense.
• 40:03
  Tim Montague: And you know, you and I were exchanging text messages about re plus Midwest?
• 40:07
  Tim Montague: Have you considered doing work in the Midwest?
• 40:14
  Brad Stutzman: We actually just added some projects to our pipeline that are in the Midwest. So as those develop a bit more, I'll I'll fill you in on it. Awesome, exciting stuff.
• 40:26
  Tim Montague: Hey guys, are you a residential solar installer doing light commercial, but wanting to scale into large CNI solar? I'm Tim Montague. I've developed over 150 megawatts of commercial solar, and I've solved the problem that you're having. You don't know what tools and technologies you need in order to successfully close 100 KW to megawatt scale projects. I've developed a commercial solar accelerator to help installers exactly like you just go to cleanpowerhour.com click on strategy and book a call today. It's totally free, with no obligation. Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate you listening to the pod, and I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Go to clean power hour and click strategy today. Thanks so much.
• 41:14
  Tim Montague: Well, thank you so much. Brad Stutzman with oh three energy for coming on the show. Check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Tell a friend about the show. That's really my only ask here is to tell a friend there are tons of people who do not know about the Clean Power Hour, and you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from my listeners. I would love to see you at a show.
• 41:39
  Tim Montague: My goal in 2026 is to meet 100 new people. Pull who know about the show at trade shows, so come out to the shows and hunt me down. I'm often in the Chint Power Systems booth, so that's a good place to look for me. And with that, is there some good way to contact you? Brad, beside your website,
• 42:00
  Brad Stutzman: that's probably the best way, is the website or through social media. I'm also on LinkedIn as well. Brad Stutzman,
• 42:06
  Tim Montague: all right, thank you so much. I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage.
• 42:09
  Tim Montague: Take care.
• 42:10
  Brad Stutzman: Brad. Thanks, Tim. You.