Latest / Clean Power Hour / The Future of Community Solar: Expanding Models, Markets and Scale with Nate Owen of Ampion | EP206

Transcript

The Future of Community Solar: Expanding Models, Markets and Scale with Nate Owen of Ampion | EP206 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Nate Owen: We have an absolutely huge queue of people waiting for access to community. So on the corporate side of it, it's insatiable. I often use the analogy. We're selling a slice of bread. They want 10 bakeries?
• 1:02
  Nate Owen: There is absolutely we should be doing more of this. And I believe that utilities should be financially incentivized to interconnect these systems as quickly as possible.
• 1:16
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best and solar batteries and clean technologies every week, I want to go deeper into decarbonisation. 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.
• 1:37
  intro: Together, we can speed the energy transition.
• 1:46
  Tim Montague: Today on the Clean Power Hour community, solar 2.0.
• 1:50
  Tim Montague: Most of my listeners know that here in the US, we have a burgeoning community solar market, but it really is only a great market in perhaps five growing into 10 states. And community solar is so important because it allows consumers and business owners who don't own their facility to partake in the solar market. And or renters, or people with Shady roofs, so many subgroups that just cannot put solar on their facility, community solar is there for them. So I want to welcome Nate Owen, the founder and CEO of Ampion. On to the show. Welcome, Nate.
• 2:32
  Nate Owen: Thank you, Tim. Very happy to be here.
• 2:36
  Tim Montague: It's not often that I get to talk to such story, veterans in community solar. So give our listeners a little background on yourself, though, Nate, how did you get interested in energy and then this aspect of community solar.
• 2:52
  Nate Owen: I have spent my entire career in the utility industry, it was fortunate enough to participate in the very early days of deregulation, I kind of had a front row seat in the deregulated utility markets for about 15 years. And I've loved every second I've been in the industry. It's been an intellectual exercise, and super fun. And when I came across community solar, I absolutely fell head over heels for this product. So I had founded Ampion, in 2014. And, you know, it was all about, you know, building a platform and software platform that could enable renewable energy to be provided to everyone everywhere.
• 3:40
  Nate Owen: So for the past 10 years, my company has spent a lot of time figuring out the complexities of consumer compliance and community solar programs and interconnection challenges. And just a myriad of what I call business development or early evolutionary stages of an industry, we've been dealing with that for a good 10 years.
• 4:11
  Nate Owen: And right now, we're extremely excited, because we see a definitely a much more mature product, one that is able to be provided to a much wider consumer base. And with the IRA, you know, guidance being figured out, we're very excited right now about the community distributed generation industry.
• 4:35
  Tim Montague: And if you, my listener, are not aware of the main flavor of community solar, there is a, a, you know, there's a variety of ways that community solar comes to fruition, but the main model now in the United States is you create a state program, like the Illinois shines program, but these programs exist in half a dozen states, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Mexico. Where else here in the Midwest, Minnesota, yeah, Minnesota was a early adopter.
• 5:17
  Tim Montague: And, and then you you funnel incentives from consumers into a pool, which then feed back into a program that makes it more affordable to produce clean energy in the form of a small utility solar array. So it's a central small utility facility, generally one to five megawatts AC and these are, you know, five to 50 megawatt solar farms and then Consumers, depending on the state what their geographic restrictions are, but within a couple of 100 miles, you could think of right consumers, in some vicinity to these projects can buy the electricity via virtual net metering. So the computers are accounting for the electricity. And that's what computers are really good for.
• 6:11
  Tim Montague: It's a great way to allow consumers to participate though, it directly in the solar market, of course, you have this phenomenon of, you know, in certainly in deregulated markets like Illinois, where there are 70 energy suppliers are areas as they're called. And some of those areas are buying clean power, so to speak, from wind and solar projects around the country, and then reselling that to their consumers. So there's a variety of ways that consumers can participate in the energy transition. But this is a very concrete one. And but but Nate, it's been limited to states with these really robust programs, every state is different. It must be quite challenging for companies like Ampion to manage all those flavors. And you're dealing with, you know, consumers, you're dealing with businesses, these are IPPS, asset owners, right, who are building and owning solar farms.
• 7:06
  Tim Montague: And then you're also dealing with this huge variety from state to state, but we'd love to hear your general overview. And then what is community solar 2.0, in your mind.
• 7:20
  Nate Owen: So one of the lessons I learned from operating in deregulated energy markets, which weirdly had a lot more standardization than we see in community solar markets today.
• 7:31
  Nate Owen: Yeah, one of the things I learned is the value of standardization. And so there, you know, we spend an extraordinary amount of time and effort on creating standardization in our processes in our language in our contracts. Because, you know, it's our you know, we know that if the customer experience in with this particular product isn't good. It's no one's going to be successful in this industry. And so we spent a lot of time simplifying things, you know, standardizing simplifying, and, you know, that was a strategy that worked in deregulated markets, and you know, it is working in this particular segment as well. So, you know, that's one way that we've been successful, I think, I don't know the exact number of markets that we are servicing customers in right now. I believe it's around 12, or 13.
• 8:32
  Nate Owen: You know, and so you imagine that's on the order of 40, something utilities, that's cross multiple different programs, including in New York, where you've got in Massachusetts, you know, these old programs go through iterations as requirements in order to service portfolios. And so when you add all that up, it's an extraordinary amount of requirements, including old programs that just don't work in some cases. So, you know, we spent a lot of time and effort, making sure that things as mundane as being able to get access to data in a standardized format, and on a routine basis, is done properly, not only by, you know, our company, but also other market participants, including utilities. So that's one, you know, one way we've worked to be able to scale this industry. It's something we were very proactive about in deregulated markets. And one thing is the market participant that you have to do in an industry that's young is actively participating in, you know, laying the groundwork for how the industry is going to work. You know, again, we spent a lot of time working with utilities and regulators on rules and consumer protection and process requirements and contract requirements and all kinds of idiosyncratic nuts and bolts of the industry. I
• 9:59
  Tim Montague: mean, talk about EDS and inkers idiosyncrasies.
• 10:02
  Tim Montague: One of the one of the nuances with community solar is that early on in a program, consumers are going to get a separate power bill when they subscribe to a community solar project.
• 10:13
  Tim Montague: And then over time, you will figure out a way to do on Bill and then it's, it's all coming on a single bill. And I understand that there have been some fairly significant hiccups in different parts of the country around this even when you're dealing with a single power bill, sometimes consumers aren't getting credit for the community solar that they're buying. But anyway, we want to we want to make this as easy as possible for all parties concerned. Right? It's It is truly a win win for the United States. When We green the grid, it's good for our health, it's good for sustainability, it's good for national security, it's good for jobs, etc, etc, etc.
• 11:51
  Tim Montague: And the less friction we can have in the system, and let's face it, consumers don't like contracts, they don't like dealing with extra bills. And they, they they deal with their power bill, because they have to, right, it's a must do got to have electricity. And now you have a choice, that's great in these markets. But do you can you address this? Like, how is it working with utilities? And the regulatory bodies? And is Is it is it working?
• 12:23
  Nate Owen: It is improving? Yes, it is working. And it's actually getting better and better all the time. There. You know, there are a lot of people, a lot of people in my company that are doing a lot of the grunt work, you know, we we, you know, work with public utility Commission's and utilities all the time on improvement and process and timing, and all kinds of things.
• 12:46
  Nate Owen: And in fact, there's a lot of utilities right now that are upgrading their billing systems, you know, in the moment, because, you know, the, the influx of distributed generation is forcing a lot of these archaic billing systems of the past to struggle, in fact, you know, we we think the utility billing system is one of the single largest impediments to the, to the deployment of large scale amounts of renewable energy. The good news is that we are starting to see utilities, upgrade those billing systems.
• 13:18
  Nate Owen: The bad news is that they struggle a lot, those are, those are old systems that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to implement over the years. So I will say that things are getting much better. You know, and I went through the same thing and direct, you know, when, when we had the first couple of years, you know, people were figuring out process and data communications protocols, and, you know, exception resolution situations, how to read, you know, meters in a deregulated marketplace, you know, all the challenges that one might expect, when a big industry, all of a sudden goes from a monopoly service to being serviced by, you know, 200 different companies. So I'm seeing improvements all the time, and the models that are being implemented later on by states that are taking on these that are implementing new programs, they are definitively taking from programs that have been implemented elsewhere and have worked. So that's, that's a very positive development. But you know, the reality is that I think renewables can't wait for regulators to figure everything out. And I'm starting to see the industry, outrun the regulatory regimes and the utilities. You know, we are starting to see community solar models, you know, wherein there's this notion of shared benefit, rather than, you know, one Hey, one large, huge offtake or on a 200 megawatt PPA, we're starting to hear and see a lot of talk about applying the principle constructs of community solar or community distributed generation to assets larger than than five megawatts. And I'm excited about that, because if, in fact, we can start to build out this community construct, but at a scale of 10 or 20, maybe even 50 megawatts, I see the product reaching are accelerating, very significantly.
• 15:28
  Tim Montague: Cool. I would love to lean into this what is the next generation of communities solar in the pre show, we were talking a little bit about the rec market here in Illinois, otherwise known as Illinois shines or the adjustable block program. Those rec values are what really jumpstart the solar industry, right, in residential, the RECs might be $70 A megawatt hour or seven cents a kWh. In commercial industrial, they might be four cents a kWh. Well, an industrial user is paying four cents. And so when they could buy solar power for two cents, right, all of a sudden, this makes tremendous sense. And they and they will and they will invest in a solar facility when they can, they can get a discount by buying solar power, but money talks and and you know, the the can will get kicked down the road. If it doesn't save a customer money, they're not going to do it. Nine out of 10 times. So there's there's that there's these programs and ways to step outside of them or run faster as you would say and And then there's also the advent of storage. So let's, let's go more into the future of community solar, what does that look like?
• 16:51
  Nate Owen: I mean, I see, you know, when we're talking about future I'm looking at, say, a year or two, but we're already seeing this corporate America's motivated to be in the community solar construct. They know they very much want to participate.
• 17:06
  Nate Owen: We've seen that for years. And it's not something people think of when they think of community solar, necessarily. But you know, in Illinois, for example, there is the option to do community. So outside of the Illinois shines program, and we have seen a very significant amount of business in seeking to develop assets outside of the AVP program, or the adjustable block program. And primarily, you know, the benefit of participating in the ebp program is the is the right contract, and the, you know, the guaranteed revenue over a certain period of time at a certain rate. Developing outside of that program means that you need to, you know, monetize those wrecks somewhere else. And we've seen an appetite on on the behalf of corporate America, at least in some service territories, or at least at some rates, where they're interested in not only being a subscriber to a portfolio, but also, you know, taking a lower discount or paying a premium, if you will, for the risks associated with the projects, and thus being able to take the benefit of additionality. And we're seeing a lot more of that. And so I think that, you know, for the next several years, there's going to be an insatiable appetite from not just, you know, the fortune 500, or 1000, but really the entire business community, the much community, the investment community, to get not only on to these sites to save money, as you said, but also to start to participate at a large scale, be the anchor customers, we're already seeing large corporates, you know, signing contracts. And soon after the contract is executed, the portfolios finance, and we're seeing a lot of these days, you know, I think a lot of portfolios in the future are going to be they have the potential to be above five megawatts, hopefully, that cap starts to fade away a little bit. And also, I hope that, you know, we start to see the balance sheet of corporate America, come into the equation, and, you know, also, you know, nonprofit America, come into the equation not only benefit from the product, but also potentially investing in it as well. And the IRA certainly, you know, promotes that in a big way.
• 19:41
  Tim Montague: So do me a favor and distinguish if you would, a 50 megawatt community solar project from a 50 megawatt virtual virtual PPA that has a single off taker, say, a data center or something like that, though, because community solar, its roots are smaller, distributed projects across the landscape, and servicing multiple offtakers. I mean, Illinois, the rule is as as few as four off takers, but as many as hundreds. And is that is that different in your in your example, though, of a larger community solar project?
• 20:17
  Nate Owen: Well, the first of all, the most community solar projects are five megawatts, and below, the only state that allows more than a five megawatt facility. Off the top of my head is the California Program, which, you know, is really up in the air right now. So I can't even say that I can't even say that they still allow for a 20 megawatt facility. So I think every state that we are in five megawatts is the largest size.
• 20:45
  Nate Owen: And, you know, here's what's really interesting about community solar visa vie have large scale virtual power purchase agreement, or even a behind the meter, sort of installation. You know, community has the benefit of replaceability. And it's all about risk. And I hear this routinely, from the people that we work with the very large projects are, can be risky. And we've seen that over and over again, just recently, the the utility scale projects in New York, you know, it's my understanding that that if they haven't been pulled off the table, they're near being pulled off the table. Because, you know, margins were so tight or, you know, the economics didn't work in those contracts. And I've talked to numerous corporate offtake kurz and others who just say, you know, they don't want to spend a year or two, negotiating a contract at the CFO level to engage in and then end up two or three year late years later getting the benefit of that development effort. Community is just a lot easier than that. And we've seen a lot of capacity come to market in states like Massachusetts, Maine, Illinois, pretty much anywhere you look, there's a lineup capacity coming, it's a very popular product, not only from the consumer side of the equation, but also from the investor side of the equation, because you're working with multiple off takers. And so you're risk that one of those is going to go bankrupt, or one of those who knows what's going to happen to them. We, you know, a couple of years ago, we had a hospital that got hacked and lost their investment grade rating over the course of a weekend, something like that, you know, so there's always risk in these contracts, the ability to bring in multiple offtakers, of all ilk, we can put low to moderate income customers on as subscribers, we can put some of the, you know, we can in some states, but very large facilities on to these solar farms. So, there's a lot of flexibility there, you know, there's a lot of contracts, flexibility, you know, a lot of these larger PPAs are, you know, 2025 years, you know, in, in the community solar world, you know, corporate offtake, depending on credit rating, you can sign a 10 year contract, sometimes it's 15 year contracts, sometimes it's 20 year contracts. So, you know, the I was at a conference focused on financing of renewable energy financing. This is about six months ago. And I was very interested to hear that community, solar was one of the most bankable product offerings or financial product offerings that existed in the renewable space. And I thought, wow, you know, that that's a big change from where are we We're at 10 years ago, when financiers didn't, you know, some understood it, but not everybody did. And now what they've realized is that, you know, it's, it's a mutually beneficial product that is, I think, a little bit easier to develop and larger scale are behind them, the meter systems, and most importantly, it has the feature of replaceability, right? If someone goes bankrupt, if someone if a residential consumer, God forbid, passes away, or moves out of a utility service territory, we can take them off of the site, usually in a month, you cannot uninstall systems from a rooftop, and you can't, you just can't do these types of things in the buying the meter utility scale.
• 24:41
  Tim Montague: So what I what I hear you saying is, it's the marketplace aspect of this, right, you, you Ampion is is is a matchmaker, right, it, it takes off takers, and and gives them access to the kWh from a myriad of projects. And depending on what it is that they're looking for. They they will have some choice. But it also, you know, it begs the question, are we building enough community solar, right, like, there are limits to these programs, let's say roughly 250 megawatts a year here in Illinois of traditional community solar, and, and then maybe another 50 of low and moderate income through Illinois solar for all. And, and the, you know, the actual demand from consumers and business owners is probably 10x That or something like that. We
• 25:45
  Nate Owen: have an absolutely huge queue of people waiting for access to community. So on the corporate side of it, it's insatiable, I often use the analogy. We're selling a slice of bread, they want 10 bakeries.
• 25:56
  Nate Owen: There is absolutely we should be doing more of this. And I believe that utilities should be financially incentivized to interconnect these systems as quickly as possible. You know, I think Arcot has figured it out.
• 26:11
  Nate Owen: I don't know all the things, everything about our COC interconnection rules, but they've seemed to have interconnected you know, 100 times more than anybody else out there. The the critical distinction is that we need to start thinking of community solar farms as requiring storage on them. Because, you know, they, they need to be powerplants they need to have some dispatch ability they need to provide value. Sure. On you know, days when The sun's not shining or hours when the sun's not shining, you know, just my belief that there should be an absolutely massive effort to build community solar farms everywhere, you know, and it's not just solar farms, it's, you know, standalone storage, it's it can be large or it can be small, it can be potentially, you know, fuel cells, community hydro. There, the model works, the construct works like we see it work. We see it work in Massachusetts and New York and Maine and actually everywhere it's working, despite the fact that utilities can be slow and not totally attuned to the requirements, you know, all the time. But I absolutely I think we should be doing more of this.
• 27:26
  Nate Owen: I think the states that have done it, I've really proven it proven it Illinois is one of them.
• 27:31
  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 chintpowersystems.com To find out more.
• 28:59
  Tim Montague: So let's, let's talk about solar and storage. And then storage alone. It's still it's still small potatoes, the number of community solar projects that have storage attached to them.
• 29:10
  Tim Montague: And but you know, now in some states, there are specific incentives for storage. And of course, there's the the IRA incentives, which is, you know, lowering the cost of clean energy across the board. But, but how does that let you know, one of the, one of the promises of community solar is a 10 or 20% savings to the consumer.
• 29:33
  Tim Montague: Okay, so in Illinois, that's great. Now you throw in storage to the equation, it's a much more valuable asset, it, it has a layer of value stack, right?
• 29:50
  Tim Montague: And how does that affect the value for the consumer though?
• 29:57
  Nate Owen: The battery is interesting. And I'll talk about New York, because that's just today, what I'm most familiar with, you know, Con Ed has a battery program beater has a, an option for batteries in it. And you know, as you might expect, the batteries are providing power during peak hours, 200 peak hours of the summer month between May and September, I think June and September, I forget the specific day. So they're obviously they're contributing the system reliability in the city during peak hours. And so as you might expect, the value of those kilowatt hours discharged kilowatt hours is pretty high.
• 30:45
  Nate Owen: And in fact, I heard from one developer that all in and this I think of this particular individual and company as the Leonardo da Vinci of development, he was telling me, I put together a project that was apparently worth $1.38 per kilowatt hour. And I thought, wow, how did we do that? But you know, those are kind of rates DRV, who knows that the LSR V was involved. You know, batteries are extremely valuable in kind of service territory in New York City. So
• 31:28
  Tim Montague: it might be a 5x over just the value of solar electrons or something like that, right.
• 31:34
  Nate Owen: I'm gonna guess. I mean, the reader probably in Connett is, you know, and it's One is pretty, you know, all the time. I haven't looked at it recently. But that's how I think of Con Ed is, you know, one of the most expensive markets in the country. But if you're pulling in $1.40 per kilowatt hour, yeah, I'd say you're getting? Yeah, five, four to five times.
• 32:02
  Tim Montague: And I've heard whisperings of, you know, like five megawatt hour batteries in New York. So just storage alone.
• 32:11
  Tim Montague: Is that is that a community solar play? Or what is what's going on with storage alone?
• 32:18
  Nate Owen: Yeah, I mean, they're considered community distributed generation. And so we have standalone batteries right now that are, you know, community solar community storage farms, they produce a monetary value.
• 32:30
  Nate Owen: And we can discount that value under a long term contract with in these cases, a corporate subscriber. And so we've been, you know, putting large corporations onto solar farms with batteries, and now we're doing it on standalone storage facilities. And it is different.
• 32:58
  Nate Owen: Because basically, because, you know, the kilowatt hour that's coming out of a community solar farm, while you know, the richest kilowatt hours, if you will, across the country, typically, because it's generation that's, that's closer to load. The, the, the monetary value of storage is very significant. So you have to find the appropriate offtakers for that type of portfolio, because you need to have the right types of subscribers with the right consumption profiles. And they're, you know, 40, I think it's not a very significant percentage of the value of a, one of these, you know, standalone storage facilities is generated in 200 hours of the summer. So for some facilities, you could be generating, you know, potentially 80% of the value of a facility in June, July, August and September.
• 34:10
  Nate Owen: Yeah. So, unless you're gonna go through some different billing paradigms, you know, you might have to find someone who can make some big payments in those months, or can meet the contract payment terms.
• 34:25
  Tim Montague: And, you know, you might go well, how is this Greening the Grid, if we're just installing batteries? And I go, well, first of all, you could, you could be charging that battery with a utility solar farm to make it economical, or your battery is simply replacing coal fired or natural gas fired generation. So I guess that's the that's the question. Has somebody done the math on if we replace natural gas peaker plants with batteries? Is the is the carbon footprint lower of that? asset? Do we know?
• 35:10
  Nate Owen: If we replace natural gas plants with batteries? Yeah.
• 35:15
  Nate Owen: You know, I quite honestly, I'm not the expert on that type of topic. I mean, intuitively, I mean, well, specifically, you know, there are things like local law 97, which we believe does allow, you know, building owners in New York City to avoid penalties commensurate with the amount of offtake they get from a an off site battery. So I do believe that, you know, batteries are a step in the right direction. Sure, they're not perfect, some people are going to charge them with great power in during peak hours, potentially. But the reality is, you know, they're a vehicle and you need it to enable renewable energy. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm not making the distinction on you know, is this better than a natural gas plant?
• 36:05
  Nate Owen: I know, it's a natural gas plant, provided it's manufactured responsibly, and you know, the safety ratings are fine and all that jazz. I'm comfortable with it.
• 36:17
  Tim Montague: I can't remember the exact statistics but when you when you look at an internal combustion engine vehicle versus a battery powered vehicle, the carbon the the lifetime carbon footprint of that Eevee is substantially lower than the ice engine vehicle, all thing you know, all in by a factor of two at least, and I think he goes as high as a factor of five. So we are Greening the Grid with batteries and they they do have a lower carbon footprint. I don't know the exact statistics you my listener may know. So please send me some links if you're if you know of a good quantification of grid scale batteries. But, you know, the carbon footprint of grid scale batteries. So Nate, what else should our listeners know about?
• 36:59
  Tim Montague: You know, the evolution of community solar? What is what is your what are you excited about?
• 37:03
  Tim Montague: And what is keeping you up at night?
• 37:07
  Nate Owen: Well, I mean, the Cal California's decision a few weeks ago, was baffling. Yes, it was, you know, I think it's really important for people to understand how just disconcerting it is, you know, someone in my company pointed out a few months ago, that the California utilities had, I think, you know, pointed to the state of Maine as a case study for challenges with community solar programs. And, you know, for the for, for the people that, you know, we have our sleeves rolled up in us every single day, that was really shocking, to see the state of California as utilities, pointing at the state of Maine.
• 37:50
  Nate Owen: And, you know, saying, well, the state of Maine has had some challenges. So, you know, we expect to have significant challenge. So we're,
• 38:02
  Tim Montague: we're recording here in late March, give our paint a picture, though. What's the deal with community solar in California? Because California is a nascent community solar market still, even though it's a very mature solar market? It's a bit of a laggard in the community solar space. But what's the what's the situation?
• 38:17
  Tim Montague: And why are you baffled by the CPU sees recent decision? Well,
• 38:24
  Nate Owen: the SB 43, was California's foray into community solar in 2014. And, quite honestly, it's what got me hooked on community solar, because when I read about it, I, I was just, you know, floored and excited. So California had the first program, and unfortunately, it was not structured very well, you know, for example, they, the California program required customers that signed up for community solar to to pay a departing load charge. And they weren't departing load. So you know, it made it very difficult for people to look at a community solar contract and say, Okay, I'm gonna pay an additional two or three cents, to go on a community solar farm, rather than saying with my utility, and so that persisted for a bunch of years. And actually, a few years ago, we made the decision to get into California, I brought the first community solar farm to COD, last summer, I believe, in SCE service territory, invested a couple of years work on the whole program, and found California to be a market full of people that wanted to do this. You know, not and, you know, just like New York, and Massachusetts and Maine, and everywhere else, you know, we're finding a growing population of people that once they understand the product, they are absolutely demanding it and who would want it. So there was a lot of investment, at least for my company into the California market, and several other people went through St. E's auction last year to bring portfolios to market. But unfortunately, the PUC, the administrative law judge decided that the programs that had been in place hadn't been just or fair. And thus, a new program should be implemented, which, which provides a revenue model similar to PURPA, you know, qualified facility revenue model. And I think this is one of the first times we've seen this in any community solar market, where the power that is produced by these solar farms that are extremely valuable to local communities is being valued at, you know, wholesale locational marginal prices or, you know, constantly, you know, at very low rates associated with like allocation, you know, cost allocation models, we usually see community solar incentivized in some way, maybe it's through a volumetric rate where, you know, if you subscribe to a solar farm, you get a kilowatt hour value, the same that you would be charged by the utility.
• 41:20
  Nate Owen: Well, if that happened in California, the solar farms would be being built left and right, but instead, they're treating these solar farms as essentially PURPA assets. And that's not going to provide a lot of room or incentive economically for people to operate in the California market. That said the IRA is providing incentives and And, you know, equipment costs right now are pretty low. So but I think, you know, it's important to understand the California, California Public Utility Commission for a baffling reason, just, you know, went further and stymieing development efforts there. And I mean, I'm telling you, they're losing out on, I think billions of dollars of incentives and development. I mean, you know, I often talk about this in states that, like Maine, or Massachusetts, Massachusetts, those states are full of little shiny generators that are providing local power without pollution to communities all over the states. And they're financed by third parties largely and why in the world, we do not want that. It's just doesn't make any sense to me with the California Public Utility Commission
• 42:38
  Tim Montague: is coming on the coattails of nem 3.0, which basically collapsed the residential market it what's
• 42:46
  Nate Owen: the view? I can? I don't know. I mean, how do you how do you explain this? I don't understand.
• 42:52
  Tim Montague: It seems to me the CPUC has lost its way. I don't know what what the roots of that are. I'm jaded, I think of, you know, being captured by some evil empire. But anyway, we're almost out of time. Nate, I would love to, to hear a little more about kind of where, where the puck is going, like, Where Where are you guys leaning into the future? of community? Solar?
• 43:24
  Tim Montague: What markets are you paying special attention to that are emerging markets? There
• 43:29
  Nate Owen: are several emerging markets, you know, and for us, you know, we see a whole Okay, so, you know, there are batteries, as we've already discussed, I see as a very big growth opportunity for the entire industry. But you know, there's also, there's been a lot going on in the states in New York, you know, masaje. Main has been very active for the past few years and will continue to be active. We are seeing rumblings across our home state of Massachusetts, which we love to hear the states of Minnesota, Colorado, Illinois continues to be very active, though. And, you know, again, we were starting to see this community solar construct be applied, you know, outside of the community solar programs. And I just, I firmly believe that we're going to start to see the community solar construct, ie, you know, multiple off takers on distributed generation assets. I think that's going to be the predominant model. From now on.
• 44:36
  Nate Owen: You know, I think there's huge benefit to for numerous larger entities to share the benefits to LMI customers in their local areas. We're seeing a lot of hospitals, municipalities, corporate America, wanting to invest in LMI communities, and we have more women providing significant benefits to LMI customers for years, and we're continuing to see growth in that particular segment. So yeah, I'm, I'm really excited about our space right now. It's seems like there's just endless opportunities going, at least in the states that have forward thinking regulations and utilities that want to participate in this transition.
• 45:25
  Nate Owen: Yep.
• 45:27
  Tim Montague: Well check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. Please tell a friend about the show. Reach out to me on LinkedIn, I love hearing from my listeners, or contact me at the website, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Nate, how can our listeners find you?
• 45:48
  Nate Owen: ampion.net or you can email me I guess I'm at nowen@ampion.net. Yeah, I love talking about the industry, Tim.
• 45:57
  Tim Montague: Great. Well, thank you so much, Nate Owen CEO and founder of Ampion for coming on the show today. Thank you.
• 46:02
  Nate Owen: Thank you, Tim.
• 46:02
  Nate Owen: Greatly appreciate it.
• 46:05
  Tim Montague: I'm Tim Montague.
• 46:05
  Tim Montague: Let's grow solar and storage.
• 46:07
  Tim Montague: Hey, listeners. This is Tim. I want to give a shout out out to all of you. I do this for you.
• 46:13
  Tim Montague: Twice a week. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving us your time. I really appreciate you and what you're all about. You are part and parcel of the energy transition whether you're an energy professional today, or an aspiring energy professional. So thank you. I want to let you know that the Clean Power Hour has launched a listener survey and it would means so much to me. If you would go to cleanpowerhour.com click on the About Us link right there on the main navigation that takes you to the about page. And you'll see a big graphic listener survey, just click on that graphic, and it takes just a couple of minutes. If you fill out the survey, I will send you a lovely baseball cap with our logo on it. The other thing I want our listeners to know is that this podcast is made possible by corporate sponsors.
• 47:16
  Tim Montague: We have cin power systems, the leading three phase string inverter manufacturer in North America. So check out CPS America. But we are very actively looking for additional support to make this show work.
• 47:35
  Tim Montague: And you see here our media kit.
• 47:35
  Tim Montague: With all the sponsor benefits and statistics about the show.
• 47:40
  Tim Montague: You know we're dropping two episodes a week. We have now over 320,000 downloads on YouTube. And we're getting about 45,000 downloads per month. So this is a great way to bring your brand to our listeners and our listeners our decision makers in clean energy. This includes projects executives, engineers, finance, project management, and many other professionals who are making decisions about and developing, designing, installing and making possible clean energy projects.
• 48:14
  Tim Montague: So check out cleanpowerhour.com both our listener survey on the about us and our media kit and become a sponsor today. Thank you so much. Let's go solar and storage