Latest / Clean Power Hour / What's REALLY Happening to The Solar Industry Under the Big Beautiful Bill? | EP296

Transcript

What's REALLY Happening to The Solar Industry Under the Big Beautiful Bill? | EP296 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Marc Palmer: Everybody seems to have a pretty intense focus on quality right now, and so they're being more particular.
• 0:58
  Marc Palmer: They're saying no to more opportunities because they really want to focus and double down on their highest quality projects and partners, and that's because provides the most certainty for execution and in a environment where distractions can be, you know, could be extremely costly if not. You know, cause death for a company, that makes a ton of sense. So we heard that from some of the best players in the market.
• 1:24
  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.
• 1:35
  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.
• 1:51
  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.
• 2:40
  Tim Montague: Today, we're going to give you a roundup of the Midwest solar Expo that happened earlier this week. It's June 13, and we just spent two and a half days in Chicago at the Midwest solar Expo with professionals from all over the country, geeking out on CNI, solar, utility, solar, manufacturing, finance, the big, bad, beautiful bill that might destroy our industry temporarily. But there's good news. There's always silver linings. My guest today is Marc Palmer. He is the founder and CEO of conductor solar. He's a repeat guest, and I'm so thrilled to have you back. Marc, welcome.
• 3:24
  Marc Palmer: Thanks, Tim, exciting times that we live in,
• 3:27
  Tim Montague: it is there's no shortage of excitement, good, bad, ugly, and the as we were saying in the pre show Marc, the thing that I'm so excited about, honestly, this is completely genuine, is we are at the right place, at the right time, in a fantastic industry called the solar and battery storage industry. It's also solar, wind and storage. There's other stuff, right? Wave Energy, hydro, nuclear, etc, but the grid is going to go to 50% solar, whether you like it or not. Listener, it's going there.
• 4:00
  Tim Montague: It's just a question of how fast it goes there. Unless there's some miracle and we invent affordable fusion, we will event eventually invent fusion energy here on Earth. Okay, that's the technology that rains photons down on us. But guess what? It's probably going to be super expensive, as Elon Musk will tell you. So anyway, Marc, introduce yourself again. I'm sure the listeners are familiar, but in case they're not. Tell us a little bit about you and what conductor is.
• 4:35
  Marc Palmer: Yeah, yeah. Thanks.
• 4:35
  Marc Palmer: Tim. My background is in the utility scale financing space, and then that was within benergy for a couple of years, and then I've been in the middle market focused on CNI and commercial solar CNI and community solar financing and M A for the past eight or so years now, I launched conductor solar, which is a platform that connects solar developers and contractors with financing providers. And we do it in a really targeted way.
• 5:03
  Marc Palmer: And we do it to help help unlock a lot of projects in this market. Most of what we focus on are PPA or M and A transactions.
• 5:10
  Marc Palmer: These are people buying and selling projects, but we also support on some ITC transfers as well as some loans. And that's it. We have a software platform to make this all more efficient and to scale it and help to grow the industry over time. And that's the that's what conductor's mission is, and we've been having some nice success with it over the last couple of years.
• 5:33
  Tim Montague: I'm a huge fan of digital marketplaces, right?
• 5:36
  Tim Montague: They just remove friction. They make it easier to con to make transactions. I almost said conduct transactions. So there's a pun for you. Conductor helps you conduct transactions. It's, it is a connector. You know? If you're selling, if you're buying, bada beam, bada boom.
• 5:51
  Tim Montague: Before I forget, listeners, please go to Clean Power Hour.
• 5:54
  Tim Montague: Check out all of our content.
• 5:58
  Tim Montague: But more importantly, check out our new merch store. We now have a full blown merch store with shirts, hats, jackets, and I'm not making any money from this.
• 6:05
  Tim Montague: This is just a service for my listeners, because it's a great name, Clean Power Hour. Who doesn't want to be part of the Clean Power Hour, and you can buy stuff there. So check it out. Just go to the shop tab at cleanpowerhour.com.
• 6:21
  Marc Palmer: You can also go ahead, I'll say on that I saw Tim and a very nice, crisp, bright red shirt at the Midwest solar Expo on Tuesday. And I'm like, Man, that guy looks good right now, and he's, like, my new merch store. So the quality, you know, the quality, is nice.
• 6:35
  Marc Palmer: I can attest to it from an in person. And I maybe even just might have rubbed the shirt sleeve just to make sure it was a nice feeling shirt. It
• 6:44
  Tim Montague: was. Now, this is, this is a Nike Polo. Okay? It's got the Nike logo on the sleeve here, boom. And it's super comfortable. I had some other nice shirts that I had made that were just okay. They were kind of scratchy. I like dry fit material, but I don't like it if it's scratchy, right? It has to feel good. I want to I want to be able to wear it comfortably all day long. But literally, there's all kinds of stuff. You can get super soft T shirts, you get baseball hats, you can get vests, you get jackets. So check it out. The other thing is, I am looking for a select group of EPCs to help go further, faster.
• 7:21
  Tim Montague: Okay, I help EPCs that are experienced residential and light commercial installers who want to grab on to large CNI like the project behind me. This is a two megawatt AC behind the meter solar project at a community college near my house in Champaign, Illinois. They're using trackers. You'll notice the panels are flat. It was early in the morning. The panels hadn't woken up. Then they point east, and they wake up and go to the sun, and then they track the sun east to west all day long.
• 7:51
  Tim Montague: I'm a expert in all the tools and technologies, the value stack, sorry, the technology stack that you need to know, and it's apples and oranges. Resi uses different equipment and different tools than commercial so reach out to me there. You can you can book a time with me.
• 8:05
  Tim Montague: You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and book a time on LinkedIn. So do it, Marc, let's talk about the Midwest solar Expo. It's Friday, after the expo. It's been a great week. We got to see Dean Solon. Well, I got to see Dean Solon talk. He's the founder of shoals. He exited Shoals, became a billionaire, and is now developing a five gigawatt solar panel factory in Nashville, Tennessee. Very interesting technology, very interesting approach. I'll be telling you a little bit about that. But Marc, why is the expo important for you, and what were some of the takeaways for you?
• 8:43
  Marc Palmer: Yeah, the expo is one of my favorite shows to go to of the year, and I especially like the venue that it was at this year, and they had it there two years ago. It's in Lombard, like it's the location. It's not in the center of Chicago. And so there's people might bemoan that there's not a lot to do, but that's one of the beauties of it, is it's a perfect size venue for the 800 or so people that were at that show. I think it's usually eight to 900 people, and it's a lot of senior people. So it attracts a nice audience, and then everybody just kind of hangs around that venue. Around that venue for the whole two and a half days, and they're bouncing between the restaurants and the bars and the sessions and the expo halls, and people are there pretty much from start to finish, so you just get a lot more run ins and ability to get deeper in conversations. So that was really nice. I love that about the show, and that's true.
• 9:31
  Marc Palmer: You know, every year after year, at the Midwest solar Expo, I think where, you know, where I spent some time, it just kind of was processing is it's really trying to get a pulse on, how is everybody dealing with all this uncertainty in terms of what's going to happen with the budget and what's going to happen with the inflation Reduction Act and where, where, what are people's strategies and how is that evolving? We don't know what's going to shake out with all the stuff in Washington, but it's amazing how much oxygen that sucks up out of the room, just like sharing the discussions.
• 10:01
  Marc Palmer: And even even if this bill gets completely gutted and the inflation Reduction Act doesn't change, like it still is doing, like, a major disservice to the industry in terms of just how much waste of time and energy is causing and cancel projects because of it. That was, you know, not anything surprising, but just obviously a theme of the Midwest solar Expo, and happy to talk, if it makes sense. Tim on, you know, a little bit how the developers and IPPs and financing providers are, are kind of acting and behaving in light of that, if that, if that'd be helpful for the audience,
• 10:33
  Tim Montague: yeah, and that was certainly very interesting to hear norm Taft. Okay. I interviewed norm Taff on stage.
• 10:40
  Tim Montague: He's the head of storage for Generac, well known in the fossil backup generator space.
• 10:45
  Tim Montague: Now they own a robust bank.
• 10:50
  Tim Montague: Battery for residential and now they're expanding into CNI. But the thing that norm impressed upon me about the budget reconciliation bill is that they have over 1000 SKUs of parts that they're putting into their equipment, and the vast majority of that stuff comes from overseas. They're an American company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, right? Making generators, making home batteries. They also have inverters now, and yeah, it's a true blue American company, and they build stuff in the United States, but a lot of the parts and pieces come from overseas.
• 11:29
  Tim Montague: And so if you tariff that, it's going to make the cost go up for consumers. That's the the crazy thing about the tariff strategy is all as it does, is it drives up costs, and it causes them to, as you said, focus on other stuff like now they're having to rejigger their manufacturing and try to look for alternative places to get parts and things like that, and it's just not productive, or nearly as productive as let's just go and fulfill the IRA. But I would love to hear especially, I guess, on the solar finance side, you moderated a panel on solar finance with some utility developers and some asset owners. How is, how are these folks tackling the turbulence?
• 12:17
  Tim Montague: That's a word that got used
• 12:19
  Marc Palmer: a lot. Yeah, I think that. So the panel had representatives from trajectory, Madison, Kendall and Mars, so good range of EPCs developers and IPPs and some of the themes.
• 12:33
  Marc Palmer: So we talked about financing, the future strategies for CNI and community solar financing, and how that's going to evolve.
• 12:39
  Marc Palmer: Some of the themes that we talked about, and the panelists mentioned on that and that session were, everybody seems to have a pretty intense focus on quality right now. And so they're being more particular.
• 12:49
  Marc Palmer: They're saying no to more, you know, opportunities, because they really want to focus and double down on their highest quality projects and partners.
• 12:59
  Marc Palmer: And that's because, you know, provides the most certainty for execution. And in a environment where distractions can be, you know, could be extremely costly if not. You know, cause death for a company, that makes a ton of sense. So we heard that from some of the best players in the market. And then we also heard from a financing perspective, there just seems to be a little more conservatism creeping in.
• 14:12
  Marc Palmer: So that's in, you know, pricing of different financing providers and equity investors, as well as development capital and just parties buying and selling projects, just providing a little bit of conservatism, because nobody knows exactly what's gonna happen the world, and they have to be every you know, every minute they spend is a minute they can't spend elsewhere, and they're just taking that more seriously. It's still a strong market, and there's still plenty of active players participating in the financing, financing aspects of solar and storage projects. And that's true for both M and A.
• 14:47
  Marc Palmer: That's true for debt, tax, equity transferability, but those were some of the themes that we had had on the panel that would think it's worth sharing.
• 14:59
  Tim Montague: Yeah. I mean, if the if the big, beautiful bill goes through, as is unlikely, but could happen, it is going to cause a significant contraction.
• 15:08
  Tim Montague: It's going to cause factories to close. It's going to cause installers to go out of business. There will be a lot of mergers and acquisitions. Either way, there's going to be a lot of mergers and acquisitions.
• 15:26
  Tim Montague: That's the nature of a fast growing industry, I think. But the contraction will, among other things, get rid of the fat, and that will be a good thing. We will come out of it stronger. Now the so that's the doom and gloom side, is contraction pain. You're on a diet, but you'll come out leaner and meaner if they save the IRA in some semblance of what it is, right? The rocket ship. You know, we're we're building 50 gigawatts of solar panels in America. That would never have happened without the IRA.
• 16:01
  Tim Montague: Literally, 50 gigawatts. We consume just about 50 gigawatts.
• 16:05
  Tim Montague: We were headed to 60. But in that panel that you moderated, I think there were some stats about literally the industry falling off by 46% if they don't, if they discontinue the IRA incentives, 46% that's how much solar might shrink between now and 2030 and so it's, do we want to be on the growth trajectory where we're booming and we're hiring as quickly as we can and growing into multiple markets? It's I was talking to Continental, for example, the company where I cut. Teeth on the CNI solar industry in Chicago, they are now building a portfolio of large rooftop solar and storage projects. There were never portfolios of solar and storage five years ago. Okay, there were one offs, and that's the delta that the IRA and sija, okay, the climate and equitable JOBS Act did create a storage incentive in Illinois. So it's a combination. And I guess that's another theme. Marc that I'd like the listeners to think about is as the federal incentives go down, if they do go down, state incentives are even more important. And so if you're working in good states, double down on those good states, like New York, like Massachusetts, like Maryland, maybe Maine, definitely.
• 17:34
  Tim Montague: Illinois, maybe Ohio, not, not Maine. Maine has Maine has Maine disrupted their program?
• 17:41
  Marc Palmer: Yeah, Maine. Maine has been a really frustrating market for Yeah, what about Ohio?
• 17:47
  Tim Montague: Your home state?
• 17:49
  Marc Palmer: Oh my gosh, Ohio.
• 17:49
  Marc Palmer: What a what a whipsaw everybody.
• 17:52
  Marc Palmer: You know, it's close and close.
• 17:52
  Marc Palmer: I don't know if it'll get over to hump or not. They did. I mean, they did just pass some legislation that does. It's interesting. You know, it's kind of nuanced. But if you can now build behind the meter projects on adjacent parcels and connect behind the meter and still qualify for net metering. That was something that wasn't permitted before, but yeah, so a couple of things. Tim just I think it'd be interesting to talk about kind of maybe in reverse order in terms of the states. You know, something that I heard so Massachusetts right now is developing their smart 3.0 program, and I heard that they're actually, you know, pausing and delaying a little bit and getting the final the draft regs out, because they want to understand what's going to happen in Washington, and they might take a little bit of a stronger stance as a state supporting the industry if the big, beautiful bill goes through as is. And so that's an example of a state really stepping up, or considering stepping up to help fill the void left in left from Washington. And I think you're right in terms of doubling down in states. And we hope to see a lot of states really step up for that, and then thinking about, you know, what happens if this big, beautiful bill goes through as is, it's interesting when I talk to some really smart people in the industry, executives at some of the biggest and best companies in our market now, they're still not even putting a greater than 50% chance that this, this changes in the Senate in terms of what happens to the inflation Reduction Act. I mean, I know everybody needs to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, but I mean, that's a that's a pretty pessimistic view that I'm I see it a lot of the tea leaves, right? And I know when this comes out, it's going to be a little stale. But, you know, there's seems to be some momentum in the house.
• 19:28
  Marc Palmer: Republicans that wrote a letter saying, like, Oops, basically.
• 19:31
  Marc Palmer: And like, some senators who are talking about it, but thinking about, like, what, what happens to the industry if it does stay as is? I think, I don't think solar is going anywhere. To your point, I think it's, it's really important, if you think of the fundamentals that everybody in Washington wants energy independence, and you can't generate new power through other sources, outside of really solar and storage, until at least 2028 and more likely, 2030 2031 in terms of like, when some gas turbines can be delivered, and if you want to get small scale nuclear going, whatever it might be like, there's still a long horizon, and our demand in the country is only going up. And so how are we going to fill that?
• 20:13
  Marc Palmer: If solar contracts by 46% I think, you know, there'll be a valley for solar, and I think you're right, there'll be consolidation, but I still think, I think then you're going to have utility prices are going to start to go up faster than they would have otherwise. Oh, for sure. Now you're now you're talking about a world that's worse for the worse, for the the general consumer. So now the solar industry is going to still dominate, and it's not going to have the tax credit to deal with, like, there's, there's a positive world you can look at of like solar really taking off even faster, starting in 2028 2029 as as the utility rates rise by 30% and now you don't have all the complexity of the tax tax credits and stuff like that. And now solar is even more economical. I think people are paying close to half the price for modules in Europe than they are in the US. So like there's, there's definitely some fat to be trimmed, but it's not the world we want to live in. But looking at, you know what might happen, and so I don't know.
• 21:09
  Marc Palmer: Those are some of the things that we're hearing. We're seeing, we're seeing investors pause on new acquisitions of projects, and we're seeing developers trying to rush to get things through because they're the safe harbor projects. Just a lot of activity that you know is causing a lot of noise in the industry, and it's just that it's already a dynamic market.
• 21:27
  Marc Palmer: Tim, but now it's more dynamic than it have ever has been before.
• 21:30
  Tim Montague: Yes, for sure.
• 21:30
  Tim Montague: Yeah, that. I call it the clash of Titans. Okay, energy demand in the United States is going up because of the explosion of AI on the scene, and we may. Still be at just here in terms of the AI explosion, okay, I heard a prediction from a from an AI expert recently, that 2027, is his new date for AGI, for the takeoff, when the computer, okay, right now, the there are these, these models, chat GPT is the one that's in the news a lot. I use Claude a lot. US use perplexity a lot. But, you know, they're they're good, they're smart, but they're not smarter than all the humans. But the day is coming when this, the super intelligence does emerge, and the chat bot is now better than every human on Earth at everything that humans do, right? And that's when there's going to be some form of massive disruption, potentially, of our economy. And it's totally unpredictable how that plays out. There's good, bad and ugly scenarios, but it's coming. I didn't think I would see it in my lifetime, but now I do think I will see that in my lifetime.
• 22:47
  Tim Montague: And then I so back to the clash, though, right? Energy demand is going through the roof. There's electrification of transportation, which is causing a boom in demand also. And our economy globally and in the US is growing, right? So that just means more and more and more.
• 23:06
  Tim Montague: And if you can't buy wind and solar, okay, well, what are you going to buy? And you see, you know these nuclear contracts in the news, and I'm like, well, that's cool. It is clean. It's carbon free once you build the machine. But building the machine takes a very long time.
• 23:23
  Tim Montague: Look at what happened in Georgia and Vogel the cost overruns were ginormous, and it took a lot longer to build. You can't build a plant in less than 10 years.
• 23:36
  Tim Montague: You can prop up a solar farm in two to five years. I mean longer for a huge utility scale farms, but you could do a community solar farm in three years, and you could do a bunch of those, right, and put them where the power is needed, sprinkle them around these medium sized cities in the Midwest, right, and green the grid anyway. I don't think it's just nonsensical. What destroying the IRA is going to do to our economy. It's nonsensical. It's not good for our economy. It's only good for we're standing up against those green freaks kind of mentality.
• 24:14
  Tim Montague: We're stopping that crazy craziness.
• 24:16
  Marc Palmer: I just, I just really, and I think it's, it's starting to get there. But I hope the, I hope Washington the decision makers for the stuff, they appreciate that next level of like, so what? When they make these changes, if they repeal the IRA, like, it's, it's not good for the economy, it's not good for inflation, it's not good for, I mean, it's not good for policy, right? I forget who was telling me this basically, like the, you know what really encourages investment in a in a country, it's not like, Are they are they liberal? Are they more, you know, Republican? Is it a democracy? Is it a monarchy? Is it a dictatorship? Like none of that was like the major needle movers. It was just political.
• 24:57
  Marc Palmer: It was policy. Certainty is what really everybody wants for when making investments in in an economy. And I think what they're talking about here is just a complete antithesis of that. It's just, it's mind boggling how anybody can do that for business, right? Set a foundation multiple years.
• 25:16
  Marc Palmer: People make billions of dollars of investment across the country, and largely for things that Republicans stand for, of domestic manufacturing and energy to support more that are more healthy economy. So it's kind of crazy, but crazier things have
• 25:33
  Tim Montague: happened. And I'm no I'm no fiscal Hawk, but the bill, as is, would increase the national debt by 2.4 to 3.3 trillion, potentially as much as 5 trillion in the next 10 years.
• 25:47
  Tim Montague: And And
• 25:49
  Marc Palmer: that's assuming, that's assuming an interest rate on our debt of like, way below where we're actually at. And so I think that has like a 3.7% interest rate or something. I think we're more closer to, you know, we'll creep up to, like the five. So I think, yeah, that's even underselling.
• 26:04
  Marc Palmer: What'll actually happen by the CBO? Yeah, I forget the specifics, but there's Yeah.
• 26:10
  Tim Montague: And I'm very concerned about the national debt. It's been in the news a lot for good reason. It's too high. The debt service is very large as a percentage of our GDP, and we need to shrink the debt. And I'm good with shrinking the debt. I'm good with cutting programs smartly.
• 26:27
  Tim Montague: I'm not good with cutting taxes on the wealthy elite and cutting services to 10 million poor people in America. That's not the future I want to live in, because the pitchforks will come out if poor people don't have.
• 26:39
  Tim Montague: See an option, they will just burn it down, and that sucks for everyone involved. Now, I don't want to have anything to do with that for anybody. It's just that's a lot of pain and suffering. But let's talk a little more about the Midwest
• 26:58
  Marc Palmer: solar Expo. Tim on the debt stuff, I'd say I agree.
• 27:01
  Marc Palmer: Would love to see the debt come down. You can either, you know, cut costs, and, you know, have a more balanced budget, or you can grow your way out of it. And if you're going to grow your way out of it, like I think they, they kind of want to do, nobody in Washington ever cuts cost in unlike the whole right? So if you're going to grow your way out of it, let's not completely pull the plug on all this new power generation that's needed to support growing our way out of it.
• 27:24
  Tim Montague: That's part of growing the economy, right?
• 27:27
  Tim Montague: There is an economic boom happening in AI. It's and as a result, we need a lot of juice in data centers to feed that machine. It's double edged, because that AGI that might emerge from that is potentially a very scary beast. But I wanted to put something on screen. This is, let's see share, all right.
• 27:52
  Tim Montague: This is a photo of Dean Solon in the middle here with Andy clump on the left. He is the co founder, or the founder, of clean energy associates. He recently exited clean energy associates. I don't know what his next gig is, but it's probably no accident that he's hanging out with Dean Solon, because Dean exited shoals and is a billionaire and raised $850 million he said, for this new venture called Create in all of three weeks. That's what he said it took him to raise $850 million and then that's Joseph.
• 28:22
  Tim Montague: Is chief of staff there on the on the right side. But Dean was interviewed by my friend Nico Johnson of Suncast media. And the dude is just super interesting. And he is a visionary. He is the Elon Musk of solar and he probably is a little crazy too, but hopefully not as crazy as Elon. He rolled out this menu of stuff that he's building, a solar module that clicks in, mechanically and electrically in one snap. So it doesn't have an MC for an MC four has to be pushed and turned. This just snaps in and so it's more like a plug. It's a 3000 volt solar module. It goes into his own tracker, which has integrated wiring, which you know, allows for so he's building a single axis tracker also. He's also building other Balance of System stuff, including substations, was on the menu. So he's thinking big solar. He says he's taking some orders for five to 30 megawatt projects now, and the solar modules are being made in Nashville, where his factory is just yet, but he is building a five gigawatt factory, and he's right now. He's white labeling some modules from Europe and maybe Asia. But anyway, check out create. I think the website is recreate dot solar. So that was a fun event with Nico Johnson in our last minute or two together. What were some other highlights or things that you're looking forward to? I guess here in 2025 Yeah,
• 30:04
  Marc Palmer: 2025, things we're looking forward to. I mean, all this, all this chaos, makes our world and business very interesting in terms of, you know, even more chaos on the M and a side of people buying and selling projects. And we just have a very real time view of the market that very few people have. And I think that gives us a really interesting position just to understand and support a lot of projects and make sure a lot of you know, good projects are still able to get built that may otherwise die. So think that's, that's something that I don't know if I'd say I'm looking forward to it, but it's, it's, it's fun and interesting for our business, and it's going to keep us, you know, busy over the next couple of months in this uncertainty we've, I'd say, just circling back to maybe on the we talked about ITC transfers back earlier this year, we've seen, seen some good momentum on the ITC transfer side conductors focused on generally smaller ATC transfers, largely for customers who own their own solar project and they just want to sell their tax credit, and we've gotten really good at helping them to navigate the conversation and guiding them on some of the non pricing trade offs. So everybody cares about how much goes in the you know, how much goes in their pocket. But what about indemnities? Is insurance going to be involved, and how does that play and things like that?
• 31:27
  Marc Palmer: So we're working on a handful of ITC transfer deals, and are just getting a really good pulse of like, the nuances of that market. And I think I'm excited for us to continue evolving that James Coombs, on our side, has been really digging in and doing a great job of. Just chewing on on a part of the market that not a lot of people are serving or serving. Well, anyway, you mean the middle market smaller ITC transfers, okay, yeah, yes, the middle market is, is challenged on the whole but there's a lot of players. It's just a it's a really fragmented market, I think, is what we've seen. And, yeah, yeah,
• 32:02
  Tim Montague: agreed. 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.
• 32:43
  Tim Montague: Go to Chintpowersystems.com or call 855-584-7168, to find out more. Well, it was great to hang out with all our friends in Chicago at the Midwest Expo. The next event for me is the solar farm summit in August, which is also in Chicago, and then re plus Vegas in September, and then re plus Midwest, I think is in December this year, also in Chicago. So there's several Chicago
• 33:14
  Marc Palmer: events. Hey, Tim, what's your guidance to listeners about how to do re plus Vegas, right? Oh, boy.
• 33:22
  Marc Palmer: What's the right like Vegas, you know, re plus generally, you could say this applies for wherever it is. Vegas is maybe even a little bit more unique than Anaheim or wherever. So like, how should people do re plus Vegas?
• 33:36
  Tim Montague: I try not to get too uptight about these things.
• 33:39
  Tim Montague: I try to be out there, networking, meeting people, both people that I already have a relationship with, and then putting myself, putting myself in places where I can meet new people, whether that's the trade show floor or the networking events you know, usually early hours or after hours. Of course, you want to schedule meetings if you can, but don't sweat it like you are going to meet so many cool people, if you're just eyes and ears open and being curious and the serendipitous meetings are the ones that I love the most, sometimes stumbling on a new technology or a new company, and connecting the dots and being part of the energy like it is massive. You can't see the entire trade show floor generally, because it's so big now. So you have to be somewhat selective about what you see.
• 34:31
  Tim Montague: And like, two years ago, when I had a booth, I didn't see anything. I was locked down doing interviews in a booth. I'm not going to do that this year, although I will be doing interviews in the chin Power Systems booth. So anyway, I just, I think that you have to be fleet of foot and be in, be where the people are. Don't isolate, don't hang out in your hotel. Hang out in the trade show floor. And that's where, like, if you want to meet developers, you have to be on the floor. They're not going to have booths, but they're going to be out there walking around looking for solar panels, racking, EPCs, engineering firms, software platforms. And you need to also be aware of all those things that are out there.
• 35:18
  Tim Montague: And it's just amazing how things can fire under the radar, and then all of a sudden, it's like a thing like, I recently learned Marc of a design tool platform called celesca. Have you heard of celesca? I have, yeah, yeah.
• 35:30
  Tim Montague: It's a company out of Chicago.
• 35:34
  Tim Montague: They're a young startup, but they're making a great design tool to compete with helioscope.
• 35:38
  Tim Montague: I'm now a subscriber, and ultimately they're trying to take on PV cyst, I think, and doing a kind of a more full stack, like you're going to be able to produce a plan set from a celestial design. And that's something that the helioscope never did. Their one lines were never very good. You can do a one line with Celestica. So super excited to to make those serendipitous contacts at re plus. What about you?
• 36:08
  Marc Palmer: Ari plus? Yeah. I mean, it's such a massive thing.
• 36:11
  Marc Palmer: I think like re Plus is a conference that you can't like.
• 36:15
  Marc Palmer: You don't want to overextend yourself, but you also don't want to do it completely ad hoc.
• 36:17
  Marc Palmer: You want to like your some conferences you can, you can just assume you're going to run into people, and you don't need to plan a lot. To plan a lot of meetings already. Plus, you can't assume you're going to run into anybody specific. You need to keep open about who you run into, but, you know, plan some of the conversations you want to have. I always look at the big re plus as as a way to just press the flesh and. Be there and shake hands and have a little in person time to develop some rapport with people that I, I work with over zoom and Google meets and phones all the time, and it's just good to actually connect with them in person. So I try to prioritize a few of those, and then just, you know, kind of being around, I'd say the other thing is, like, just get outside a little bit. Please don't go crazy inside the casino and the trade show floor the whole time, get some fresh air and make sure you reset yourself, because it can be, it can be a little over stimulating for even the most extroverted of us, right? But I'm excited, and I also I love listening for the who still calls it SPI and who who wears that as a badge of honor like they're they've been in the industry for long enough that they call it SPI so that's always a fun little just aspect of that. Well,
• 37:32
  Tim Montague: I want to give a shout out to a webinar I'm hosting with Helga biernath and Ian Skor. Helga is the founder of Sun stall, a mechanical installer and the racking company called suns on. Suns on is a vertical racking company for agrovoltaics, or any application where a fence row could be useful, like along a highway, along a railroad, along a canal. And then the other sponsor of this event is sandbox solar, well known solar installer out of Colorado, Ian Skor is the CEO there, but we have a great panel discussion on July 15, powering agriculture's future, agrivoltague solutions for a sustainable tomorrow, featuring John Langdon, who's a farmer out of Oregon, and Professor maj Professor Majdi at I believe UC Davis. So looking forward to that. And then I have a full calendar. I mean, these are my past webinars here.
• 38:28
  Tim Montague: There's you Marc. We did one last year with Nick paragini and on solar finance. But I have a full calendar here. Of most of the events happening in North America. So you see the Midwest Expo, my webinar, Mid Atlantic, Philadelphia, Aces,
• 38:44
  Marc Palmer: one you're missing in June. There's the community, CCSA, oh yes, summit in Denver at the end of June. I think I'll be out at that one. That's the only
• 38:53
  Tim Montague: that is a great event too. I went there last year. I don't think I'm going this year, but yeah, that's in a couple weeks.
• 38:59
  Marc Palmer: Yeah, yeah. It's, I think, two weeks. Yep.
• 39:03
  Tim Montague: So check out clean power hour.com, forward slash events and connect with me on LinkedIn. With that, I'll say, how can our listeners find you?
• 39:11
  Tim Montague: Marc, yeah,
• 39:14
  Marc Palmer: you can go to our website, conductor, dot solar, and you can create an account.
• 39:17
  Marc Palmer: You can sign up, play around with our software free, or download our 2020 4m A report all that's for free. You can reach me over email, Marc@conductor.solar, or find me on LinkedIn.
• 39:31
  Tim Montague: Awesome. Thanks so much. Marc, it's great to see you, and I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Take care. Marc, thanks, Tim, you