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Community Solar and Battery Economics with 18-Month Payback · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: And what has worked for me is, you know, when I talk to people, I tell them, I don't install residential solar. I've never put solar on a house. I put them on the whole community, right?
• 1:03
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: So I don't knock on doors and do that. And I feel that the reason why I do that is because I don't want to protect just one family.
• 1:11
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: I want to protect that entire community. My attitude towards that approach is very prevalent.
• 1:21
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: I don't walk in saying, Mr. And Mrs. Smith. I'd like to help you. I sit there and say, Mr.
• 1:25
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: And Mrs. Smith, you do not want to be the only house with power, and the entire community that you live in is black. If you do that, there will be a right to come over to your house. We need to make sure that every house in this community has their power on when there's a blackout.
• 1:44
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: Would you agree?
• 1:46
  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.
• 1:56
  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
• 2:12
  Tim Montague: today on the Clean Power Hour micro grids and VPPs.
• 2:17
  Tim Montague: My guest is AJ Perkins, known as the micro grid whisper, or micro grid mentor. He has extensive experience with large scale residential talking 3000 home residential developments that are being solar and battery.
• 2:32
  Tim Montague: Eyes, okay? He is a very unique individual. He does a lot of work in Hawaii and Alaska with Native communities. Welcome back to the show.
• 2:43
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: AJ, aloha. Thank you so much. Tim, it's great to be back, aloha.
• 2:49
  Tim Montague: It is an exciting time. It is the best of times and the worst of times at both at the same time here in August of 2025 the OB BB is a bit of a wrecking ball. But guess what?
• 3:03
  Tim Montague: It increases the value of batteries for everyone. It is increasing the price of electricity for everyone, which means solar and batteries pencil faster. So it's game on in batteries and micro grids. AJ, I would love it if you could give us a cliff notes of how you got interested in solar and battery micro grids and how the industry has evolved in the last 10 years.
• 3:29
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: So this is, it's a fun it's a fun story.
• 3:32
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: You know, my background is business. You know, I've, I've been a growth CEO for 2030, years. I've been in the renewable energy industry for about 11 years, and in 2016 was when I first got introduced to Jigar Shah. We had secured a contract with LA Unified School District and our company, you know, executive said, We need help, because we don't know what we're doing. We need to figure this out. And at the time, jigger just secured supported funding for a school district up north in Northern California, and we reached out, and that initial conversation led to an ongoing call with with the one and only Jigar Shah. And you know, I'm new to the industry, so I'm just like, okay, cool, we get to talk. And it was this ongoing conversation that led us to the point where pgme was getting ready to start the public safety power shut offs.
• 4:27
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: And I remember vividly, it was September of 2017 when Jigar and I had a call, and he said, AJ, I need your help. I need you to build microgrids. And I'm like, I don't know what that is, but I'll figure it out. And the context was, you know, everybody knows that Pj is going to file bankruptcy, but what they don't know is they're going to shut off the power 30 times next year and generate capital. The company who he was with at the time said he's like, we will finance all of these micro grids to help protect the community.
• 5:00
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: And lo and behold, 11 years later, I'm still building micro grids. We've got a little over 3.8 gigawatts of projects that I've put under contract since then,
• 5:12
  Tim Montague: jigger was just on the show recently. Check out cleanpowerhour.com for that interview and all of our content on audio on video, please give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify and reach out to me on LinkedIn. So that is a great story about him understanding where the puck was going. Right those power shut offs, public safety power shut offs, they are a unique phenomenon in California. I remember the brownouts and the fires living in San Diego, and I don't miss that. I. I have to say, I love San Diego. I go back regularly and just to hang out with solar geeks and put my toes in the sand. It's a lovely place, but public safety power shut offs because of the winds and the fires. It's, it's, it's no fun, but batteries are a come to rescue, for for that phenomenon, for sure. So tell us a little more though about the evolution of micro grids and v, p, p, s, now, right now, we have sophisticated control systems and machine learning and AI that can, you know, do to do, to control this massive network of small batteries and treat it as a power plant that you can instantly ramp or unramp. And it's a sponge, right? It can absorb energy. It can attack the duck curve in California, right, absorbing all that solar and wind energy. And then it can release it in the afternoon, when power prices are high, demand is high, and it's a money machine,
• 7:00
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: sure, you know, we, I, we kind of saw what was going on, you know, understanding micro grids at the time, you know, back In 2017 18, when it was a tool for resilience, we around that time is when I also got involved with demand response, and I was involved with the utility program to help bring you know more customers, C&I, commercial and industrial customers, into The demand response world. And what I learned was many of these same customers, they liked the idea of a revenue stream for curtailing and, you know, pulling back on their power when the utility needed it, but they didn't like it when it affected their business. So this demand response program became, I mean, some people said it was a failure, because people kept opting out. But me now being in the micro grid world, I kept looking at this say, I'm building a micro grid to protect these facilities from emergencies. But unlike a diesel generator that is sitting there idle until they need it. I have a micro grid that doesn't have to sit I could actually utilize it. So that's where, you know, back around that same time, I started looking at this, saying, What if I use the excess power that was in reserve in case of an emergency for these facilities, and when it wasn't an emergency, what if I use that as a way to deploy to support the grid Exactly? So we were deploying these micro grids so that we could avoid business interruption and simultaneously support the grid because it was, it was a really good financial situation, and that's where our learning just took off.
• 8:55
  Tim Montague: And what year was that? 2018 Yeah, 2019
• 9:00
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: going into 2020 and around that time we so we did a project in New Zealand, because back then we didn't have for 2222, you know, all the regulations in the US was more challenging at the time, so we actually did a project in New Zealand, 20,000 homes. This was a pilot, and we put solar, a 10k Wh battery and our controls, and we segmented 20% of every battery so that we could sell back to the utility and use it as support. Now that was a unique program, because we gave Mercury energy the staples, easy red button. Anytime you need power, just press the button. But because we were able to support the grid, the payback period on that project went from seven to 11 years. A typical payback period. It went down to 18 months, and that was the big light bulb moment for us saying, Say
• 10:00
  Tim Montague: that again. The the phenomenon that shortened the payback dramatically was what
• 10:06
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: us taking the taking the power, yeah, and nominating it into the grid to support the grid. Yeah, and getting paid back during, let's call it demand response times. So now we're not just getting we're, you know, we're not talking about nem three and them two. We're not talking about getting paid back for the excess. We're saying we're going to hold it in our batteries until the utility needs it. So now we're not getting paid pennies for our power when they need it. They're paying dollars, you know, or multiple pens.
• 10:34
  Tim Montague: You're talking about arbitrage,
• 10:35
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: absolutely right. I mean, we're producing power at eight to 12 cents per kWh in solar, and then we're selling it back at, you know, 2030, $1 you know, potentially, depending on on what's going on in the market. Yeah.
• 10:50
  Tim Montague: Buy low, sell high, it was. And this is the other
• 10:53
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: part, and this was a risk that we took back then we looked at this, saying the likelihood of a demand response event happening at the same time as a public safety power shut off or blackout was very low. So we didn't mind nominating more of it, because the likelihood of those two events happening at the same time, we just didn't feel it was going to happen. So that was a chance we took. And, you know, we we were fortunate to see a lot of financial benefits and benefits in general, for for the way that we built our systems.
• 11:32
  Tim Montague: So when I think about the micro grid landscape, I think about, okay, what's the cost of power? More expensive power, the more important solar and batteries become. I think about regional legislation, California, New York, Illinois, these states have low income programs. They have specific battery incentive programs that shorten the payback period for battery equipment. And I think about the cost of the technology coming down, the cost adoption curve, right? We are riding that curve down, and that, you know, as the technology doubles in adoption, the cost comes down 25% that's the general rule of thumb, and that's very real, right? And now we can install whether it's host owned or third party owned, a solar and battery system, whether it's a VPP or a micro grid or both, and you see this tremendous value stack for whoever the owner is. And you know, let's face it, for a homeowner, they don't need to own the battery if it can give them resilience. They're stoked big time, right? Because in some markets that's super valuable, like California, like Texas, where you have hurricanes, the northeast, as we speak, is getting battered by a big hurricane, and you want resilience, and that's worth millions of dollars, because it's no fun to have no electricity. We go so seldom without electricity, we forget what it's like, but it camping is something we do for fun, not for life, and when you're camping in your home for more than a couple of days, that's rough. I've heard some amazing stories from from the storm Yuri in Texas. You know that caused a major outage for several days and almost for several weeks.
• 13:25
  Tim Montague: And you know, people are drinking snow from their front lawn. That was how bad things were because the infrastructure completely failed. So we have a long way to go, but micro grids truly are going to be part of the fabric of the grid of tomorrow. So let's fast forward.
• 13:40
  Tim Montague: AJ, what's going on in the modern landscape that you're dialed into and really leaning into that is taking this micro grid game to the next level.
• 13:55
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: So, you know, we've done a lot of things within the micro grid world, everything from residential to C&I, commercial, industrial to utility scale. And, you know, creating this infrastructure as a service scenario, that was really a good learning scenario as well for us, because now we're bringing Infrastructure as a Service to these municipalities, where we're not just bringing energy, but we're bringing energy, telecom, water, you know, in some cases, hydrogen, right? And a lot of it was because we see that these municipalities have a big need, but people are compartmentalizing their offerings. So a solar guys talking only about solar, a battery, you know, like there's it's the siloed approach.
• 14:40
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: Whereas, if you're a city manager, if you're a municipality man, you're sitting there saying, bro, I got this huge problem. I don't need to talk to 20 different people. I want to talk to one person that can help me understand this, because my job is this, but I need to solve this problem. So by us coming in and bringing the smart people to the table, the water people, the energy people, the and and those two go hand in hand, the telecom people. And this is something that we learned on this infrastructure as a service scenario, we had this project to support a municipal for two gigawatts of power, a huge opportunity. Now, going out and getting funding for that project. I had three or four funding, you know, sources saying, okay, yeah, we could, we could help you. We think we could help you. But our sister company was a telecom company that had the contract to do fiber in a city. And they said, AJ, if you when you open up the ground to lay your energy lines, if you have us come in to lay our telecom lines, it reduces our cost 50 to 80% and I was below, they're talking a $50 million contract. To get reduced 50 to 80% so that means I could offer a benefit to our customers at a fraction of the cost, just by inviting them to come and lay their lines when we lay our lines. So when I presented that new dynamic to our funding sources. I went from three maybes to seven. Count me in WoW, even though it was a higher price tag. And I asked them, I was like, Well, wait, why is it that you're now super excited to do this? And there, the response to me was, AJ, when we finance these assets that are spread throughout a municipal area. One of the challenges is making sure we have data and insights and all these things because of interconnectivity. But if you're saying that, we will also be able to increase the connectivity because of delaying fiber and high speed and everything, you reduce our risk, ensure increase our value, but all these things, and that's where we saw the value of bringing more solutions to the problem that was at hand, which was, you know, now we're talking about hydrogen. How can you be talking about bringing hydrogen to a state that is drought stricken? So now, by us being able to bring atmospheric water generators simultaneously with
• 17:15
  Tim Montague: clean energy. What state are you talking about now with hydrogen
• 17:18
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: that I mean to me, like, why would you talk about hydrogen to a place like California, where they're fighting over water for agriculture? And yeah,
• 17:26
  Tim Montague: depends on how you're getting the water. If you're desalinating salt water, perhaps, you know, there are places where all the drinking water comes from, desalinization. California has a lot of solar energy. You could run solar desalination plants or nuclear desalination plants, but, but, but anyway, like, I guess, the the, what, what occurs to me is, what you're talking about is innovation also, right? There are innovative approaches to development that can greatly enhance the ROI of these projects. If you're smart and you're layering on things like, Well, if you're going to build a bunch of new homes, right, set them up from the beginning to have solar and batteries. Don't retrofit in that's more expensive to retrofit. Make sure that they have enough amperage in that service to function as a VPP, to get the juice out to the bigger grid when the time comes when the need is there
• 18:26
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: absolutely so, you know, I mean, so that was one thing with the infrastructure as a service. And recently, within the past few months, I'll say, you know, we had an article that came out.
• 18:34
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: Lisa Cohn from micro grid knowledge recently wrote an article about a project we're doing in Hawaii around this utility light concept. And the idea was taking this idea of micro grids, VPP and community ownership, so it's basically the same thing that we're looking at with micro grids and VPPs, but we're implementing this new paradigm shift where it's no longer the big PPA companies that are owning the power and giving us a 20% reduction in our utility costs,
• 19:09
  Tim Montague: right? Or less, maybe 10%
• 19:11
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: exactly, if you're lucky, right? But the reality is, for anybody that digs into the financial metrics of funding these PPAs and whatnot, there's a lot of money being made. So what if we could actually bring that money directly back to the communities that you're serving? So that's where this utility light model came in. So you know, like you said at the beginning of your show, 3000 homes in Hawaii.
• 19:33
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: Imagine if we could take that VPP concept, put solar batteries, EV charging on every home in that community, and then monetize that as a whole.
• 19:42
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: Because now we've got this community VPP scenario. But now instead of the profits leaving Hawaii and going into shareholders, were actually coming at bringing it right back to the community so they could uplift
• 20:48
  Tim Montague: So this begs the question, what is the role of utilities in all of this?
• 20:52
  Tim Montague: Because sometimes the clean energy industry sees itself at loggerheads with utility industry. My colleague Barry cinnamon of the energy show loves to rail on California utilities for being stodgy and creating friction for infrastructure upgrades like solar and batteries, which are good for consumers and actually good for the grid operator. So what's your perspective on the utilities and like this project in Hawaii, where are they at?
• 21:26
  Tim Montague: Well, I
• 21:28
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: was born and raised in Hawaii, and my parents taught me, you don't have anything good to say. Don't say it. And as an adult, I've kind of understood that in a different way, which is, you know, if you don't. Understand everything. Don't just sit there and just start throwing darts.
• 21:45
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: So when I got involved with micro grids in the very beginning, I can say every single person that knew I was talking about micro grids, because I'm I'm on stage a lot.
• 21:55
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: I'm at speaking at conferences all the time, and I'm talking about micro grids in 2017 and 18 and 99% of the people said the utilities must hate you. And my response, 100% of the time was, you don't know how to talk to utilities, because I was never trying to take a customer away from a utility. My job. When jigger first asked me to step in and build micro grids, Jigar didn't say, Let's go steal business from the utilities.
• 22:27
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: Jigger specifically asked me, AJ, they're going to shut off the power. So can you go talk to your customer? Kaiser, at the time, you know, can you talk to them and say, when they have to shut off the power, we will build a micro grid so that your power doesn't go off. That's a whole different concept. This isn't taking away from the utilities. This is saying utility, I got you, if you got to shut off the power in this area of the grid to protect the entire community, shut it off.
• 22:53
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: Yeah, and this hospital will not go down. Yeah.
• 22:57
  Tim Montague: I truly believe it is a win, win. And check out my interview with Craig Lewis of clean coalition. He's running around developing community scale micro grids, mostly in California, but he has a project in the Midwest, in Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan as well. And these are projects that support 10s of 1000s of residents and important community infrastructure, like community centers, first responders, you know, fire houses, police, hospitals, and it's a win win for the utility as well, because they want to build infrastructure. They have a cost plus model that incentivizes them to to say to their their owners, we are going to build infrastructure. That is how we generate profit. Guess what?
• 23:45
  Tim Montague: They can build solar batteries and micro grid infrastructure in the switch gear necessary, and maybe some other upgrades so that the community has resilience. They get to build infrastructure instead of transmission and distribution infrastructure, right? And then the community gets resilience.
• 24:06
  Tim Montague: So it's a win, win. And I think this truly is that this has been the aha for me. Like this is why community scale, micro grids and VPPs are truly the future.
• 24:18
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: So, I mean, this is, this is what I was told a long time ago. I got a lot of smart people that I am fortunate to work with. And, you know, years ago, they said, AJ, utilities should be, should stay with transmission and distribution and continue to do the things, because we don't want to be in the TMD world. I don't want to be a utility. I don't the utilities are good at what they do, and as they have to do more, it makes it more challenging. So for So, for instance, when we were building a community out in the desert in, you know, in California, we asked the utility, we need a line to come out to this, you know, 5000 home development.
• 24:59
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: They were going to charge us a million dollars a mile. Now that the developer said, AJ, let's just go ahead and build this off grid. Let's go ahead and create, you know, micro grids for every home, and then create, you know, so now grids on every home we're connected to a community micro grid. As we built this, you know, scenario out there, it turned out to be 818, megawatt community of batteries, right?
• 25:24
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: So now we went back to the same utility and said, Hey, we're going to have this community that they're building. It's going to have 80 megawatts of power. Would you like access to that power? It now went from them charging us to send a line out there to them wanting to send a line out there themselves, because now they have access to an 18 megawatt VPP power plant that they didn't have to pay for. They didn't have to find the land. So imagine if we could work with the utilities by saying we will build the infrastructure. You guys come in and build a TMD so that we can financially benefit one another. And that's that was. That's just one example of how we can work nicely with the utilities and support each other.
• 26:14
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• 27:19
  Tim Montague: But what else should our listeners know about that they can get in touch with because we need to rinse, wash, repeat, this in so many other places across the whole country. This isn't just for California or Hawaii. This is for everywhere.
• 27:40
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: USA. I agree, and I can say, like our project in Hawaii was started because we had a community out in Waianae that on the island of Wahoo, the main island, when you fly into Hawaii, into Honolulu on Oahu, Waianae is the only area of the island that the utility is approved to do public safety power shut offs just so happens out in that area is a huge population of Native Hawaiians, Department of Hawaiian Homelands. So you could look at this community as, you know, a community that's that's getting disadvantage because of so many different things, and they're saying, AJ, we need help. We need power. We need lower cost of electricity. We need more resiliency. So it was truly a community that came to us and said, help us figure out a solution for our problem.
• 28:40
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: That's where Utility Light was born. Now from there, we are now in a situation where, in Orange County, believe it or not, we have mobile home parks that are getting their power shut off three or four times a week because they only have so much going in. People use too much power, and then it trips their you know, it trips the the circuits. So they're needing a similar situation of resiliency, lower cost of energy, blah, blah, blah, for a community that needs help, we're building this.
• 29:12
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: Just this past week, we spoke with the owners, and they're like, Yes, this is a good solution. Let's do this. So this was community led, both in Hawaii and Southern California.
• 29:22
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: That's going to continue to reach out. So when you ask, Where else can we do this? You can take this same model anywhere for us. This isn't proprietary. When people ask me, AJ, can you help me? I'll give you the full playbook. It's not okay. I'm going to charge you this. Let me go buy this? No, I will give you exactly what we're doing, and I can help walk you through those steps. Because I don't want to say it's not hard, but it's not as hard as people think.
• 29:49
  Tim Montague: I love that. So if you're listening to this, and you're aware of communities that can benefit from micro grids, and you know, I think one of the keys is they, they identify.
• 30:01
  Tim Montague: There's a group of people that identify as a community and getting their collective voice.
• 30:05
  Tim Montague: You know, behind some decision, there are literally 1000s and 1000s of these places around the country that can become catalysts for a modern grid. So thank you for sharing that utility light model. Do you have anything else to say, though about community scale micro grids? The Economics of that in and then you know, what else should we geek out on related to batteries and micro grids?
• 30:43
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: So this particular these two communities in Hawaii and Orange County, California, in Hawaii specifically. And I mean that article that Lisa Cohen wrote spelled out some of the small little nuances of that uniqueness in Hawaii, but this particular community was trying, you know, this solar for all money that was just kind of taken away from many communities, but the solar for amenity that was meant to help support solar on LMI, low to moderate income communities, this community was trying really hard for years to get access to this money to support their community. They put out multiple RFPs to get solar developers to come in and give them pricing, give them, you know, a bid or whatnot, no bidders, no one responded to their RFPs. Now there's a whole different reason why, and this and that, but you.
• 31:42
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: When we came in, it was kind of a scenario where I cannot do 125, houses. The economics just don't work. But if I'm bringing in a 3000 home order, you and I both know now I get economies of scale. I'm not buying two, 510, batteries, I'm buying 3000 and just so you know, like it at our solution in Hawaii, we're putting 40 kWh battery. We're not putting in a small, little 10k Wh battery, we're putting 40 kWh battery. Why? Because this community needs resiliency, right? So we have buying power because we are fulfilling the entire community in Orange County, we told the park owner, we kind of do four or five or your top 10, you know, energy hog users, we need to do the full community. Well, guess what? This community is only 89 homes. So it's not like this huge 20,000 home community, but with the 89 homes, we have buying power. We have installing power because now we've got an installer that can come up and install 89 all at once. So now we can reduce the cost, so we're using that buying power of the entire community, and then now we can pull it together. We create solutions. Why? Because we have a higher opportunity for economies of scale. So, you know, people think that I need 5000 20,000 and this is our smallest community, 89 but the metrics work. We reduce their utility costs by 40% it went down from 38 cents per kWh down to 24 cents. We're installing HV mini splits in all of these, you know, trailer park trailer home parks. I mean, these homes, the mini splits originally would have been $5,000 per unit in the bulk purchase, it was $3,000 and then now we're able to do it for an extra two cents per kWh, that's ridiculous. You know, to have a brand new HVAC, higher efficiency, better cleaner, air bubble, all that stuff so people don't understand. We didn't have to go and ask for grant money.
• 33:49
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: We didn't have to ask for somebody to give us a handout.
• 33:51
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: All we did was just take what everybody knows in business and use it to our advantage.
• 33:59
  Tim Montague: I love it, and I think there this is a tremendous opportunity for the solar industry. If you're a residential or light commercial installer or a C&I installer, don't think about doing one and one and one. Think about doing projects that involve 50 100,000 home projects, whether it's new construction or retrofit. It's it's a both, and obviously it's simpler when it's new construction from in many ways, but, but we need to do this on mass. We got to get away from this. Well, let's just sprinkle it all over the landscape.
• 34:43
  Tim Montague: Clusters is the key. So you have your fingers in a lot of things.
• 34:48
  Tim Montague: AJ, I know you're working on books on hydrogen and cyber security. Does? Does this? Are those? Do those topics tie into this micro grid business?
• 35:00
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: Absolutely right. So for our project in Hawaii, you know, I'm helping to make the big island the first hydrogen county in the United States. As we move towards that, you know, Hawaii, we don't have natural gas, we have propane, right? So one of the things that we're doing in Hawaii, specifically is to our residential nano grids that we've created for this community. We also have a residential fuel cell that we are going to be installing on some of the homes as an added layer of redundancy. Now this fuel cell can run off of propane, natural gas or hydrogen. So right now, because we have propane available, many of these homeowners in Hawaii, they've got a huge propane tank in their backyard. That's kind of how our life was in Hawaii, where you've got this propane tank too for cooking dry, you know, and things. So now imagine having a solar battery, electric vehicle charger and also a propane fuel cell. Yeah, in times of that.
• 36:05
  Tim Montague: And is the fuel cell that flexible, that it can the same device, can burn several types of fuel
• 36:12
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: Well, I mean, we have so full transpire.
• 36:15
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: It's the watt fuel cell, W, A, T, T. I mean, tuck them out.
• 36:18
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: These guys are freaking awesome, you know? And, and they have, they manufacture here in the United States, and they have a fuel cell that can run off of hydrogen as well. As, you know, in our case in Hawaii, is propane. So now, why is that important? Is because now, when we start bringing propane into the, you know, moving out of the conversation, and bringing hydrogen, now we can actually take the. Same redundancy, but now it's like using a more clean gas, yeah, right, giving us that ability to add redundancy while supporting the growth of hydrogen economy in in a place like Hawaii, yeah?
• 36:56
  Tim Montague: What's your take on the hydrogen economy? It's a mixed bag, right? Because a lot of the hydrogen there is a hydrogen economy. It's mostly gray hydrogen from fossil fuels.
• 37:06
  Tim Montague: You take methane and you crack it into carbon and hydrogen. But of course, you can make green hydrogen from water. You break H 2o with electrolysis. So you just put green electricity from wind and solar into that machine, and outcomes, hydrogen clean and green. So what's your take on the hydrogen economy?
• 37:31
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: I think I definitely see it as a part of our future, but I also see it being in very targeted locations. California is ripe for it, because we have a ton of excess renewable energy that's being produced, yeah, I mean, so much so that we're paying another state to take our excess renewable energy and we're curtailing it, right? So in places like California, where you have all this excess, we should be utilizing that opportunity to create green hydrogen. In places like Hawaii, we don't have access it sucks.
• 38:05
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: We don't have the ability to use electrolysis. But because of the need for more redundancy, resiliency, clean energy, energy independence, we need more resources like hydrogen. You know, we have access to different resources, with a potential for an abundance of solar, a potential for abundance of wind, a potential for geothermal, but by us creating that, that landscape, we could utilize hydrogen in Hawaii very effectively.
• 38:34
  Tim Montague: When you say Hawaii doesn't have a plethora of renewable energy, is that because it's land constrained, there's not enough land to put the solar farms on.
• 38:43
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: Oh, the above. I mean, who the heck wants to fly to the most beautiful place on earth and see a bunch of solar farms? Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, I mean, that's, that's my backyard. There's no way in heck I would sit there and say, throw up a wind farm back here. You know, don't you block my views, yeah, for my pictures, right? So you have to be very conscious about taking away from the land that we have, right? So, you know, the reality is we don't, even though we have access to the beautiful resources that God and the universe has given us, we have to be sensitive so we don't have that access that California has, okay?
• 39:23
  Tim Montague: So, so hydrogen.
• 39:23
  Tim Montague: Anything else about hydrogen you want to say
• 39:29
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: to me, Hawaii, the reason why we are trying to make the big island the first hydrogen county in the United States is because of all the things we talked about, the access to all of these natural resources, if we use them responsibly, but also the need that we have right? So if we concentrate all of our resources to the Big Island, we have an island the size of the state of Connecticut. And this is something you know, I was on the arches team in California that won the billion dollars for the hydrogen hub. If we build a hydrogen fueling station in Southern California and build one in Northern California, the likelihood of a hydrogen truck fueling here and then going up and fueling there, that may not happen. But if I fuel a hydrogen fueling station in Kona and build one in Hilo. The likelihood of that truck will be using all of it is very high, because you're on an island, right? We've got two airports, we've got two or three shipping ports. We've got, you know, stationary power. The State of Hawaii says all all backup power for hospitals and hotels have to be clean energy by 2035 or 2040 you know, we've got heavy transportation. You cannot take an electric bus from Kona to Hilo because we don't have the right infrastructure and not big enough batteries. So hydrogen is a perfect vehicle for stationary power, heavy duty transportation, airports and ship ports. So that's a good place. Everywhere else in the country, hydrogen is going to be gray for now,
• 41:11
  Tim Montague: and the hydrogen will be shipped in, just like oil and gas are shipped in. Is that the idea?
• 41:18
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: So potentially? So, I mean, I will also say this in California, first public hydrogen was stood up earlier this past year. It's a it's a joint power authority that was created, and they will become, I'll call it a broker, you know, as a joint public authority, they will be able to aggregate supply of green hydrogen and then also support the offtake scenario. And Hawaii will become one of those off takers. And why is that important? Because, as Hawaii is working towards creating their own hydrogen supply, we have access to this bridge of having an entity like first public that is in the United States sourcing green hydrogen to supply Hawaii until we ramp up and create the supply we need.
• 42:09
  Tim Montague: So let's talk about supply chain. Because you know, in the micro grid space, whether it's batteries or fuel cells or generators, supply chain matters, and we have incentives for buying Made in America equipment. But guess what? It's very hard to find Made in America batteries. So what are your thoughts about micro grid equipment and manufacturing?
• 42:38
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: So over the past couple of years, while we have, while I've been helping build these micro grid integration and aggregation entities simultaneously, I have had many technology manufacturers step up and ask, AJ, can you help us create our go to market strategy in the United States, everything from smaller startups All the way up to really large, globally known brands, so I've helped them create their go to market strategy. And over the past year, many of those strategies included localized manufacturing. And prior to the administration change, it was also just because of the plethora of opportunities in the United States. But since the administration changed, a lot of it's like, you know, we see the need for us made products and US manufacturing. What we are actively engaged in now is creating these industrial centers for manufacturing, of these technologies in an area that can help create a more vertically integrated solution.
• 43:45
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: So, for instance, in California, I have a solar panel manufacturer that has built, this is their third manufacturing plant in California. I also have another group out of, you know, Korea, that wants to create a solar micro inverter. They want to do localized manufacturing. So I brought these two together, saying, maybe you guys should be closer to each other, so we could put your solar panels, which are higher efficiency, made in the USA, with a made in the USA micro inverter that does this. And then now we're also bringing a fuel cell that also is going to be made in the United States. So we're bringing all of these different technologies that they're asking me to help create their go to market strategy. Why? Because I got customers. That's the reality is they're coming to me because I've got 3000 customers here, another 5000 customers here. So it's not just AJ, we want your knowledge of go to market strategy is, I want your knowledge, resources and your customers, but if you can build me the right widget, why wouldn't I put it in my projects? And if you're willing to look at the other products that we're using and the technologies that could be complimentary, let's keep building this, and it's a win win. We get a Made in USA product at a price point that's better, that is creating an actual solution for the problem that we are solving, and everybody's working together, so we're trying to create that harmonious landscape.
• 45:18
  Tim Montague: Yeah, you know the IRA created these 45x incentives, and my understanding is those are still in play. So there are incentives for onshoring and reshoring of solar modules, wafers, inverters, wind turbine components, battery cells, modules, as well as other materials, 50 designated critical materials, um, well in our last few minutes together.
• 45:55
  Tim Montague: AJ, what do energy professionals need to know that they may not know today, like that, I think is one of the best things you and I can do for the community is plant some seeds, whether that's an event, a publication, a person like yourself or Jigar Shah, those, those are two good ones. But what should energy professionals who want to go deeper and faster into solar and batteries or batteries and micro grids. What do they need to know?
• 46:33
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: You know, I I can only share what, what has worked for me. And what has worked for me is, you know, when I talk to people, I tell them I don't. Install residential solar. I've never put solar on a house. I put them on the whole community, right?
• 46:48
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: So I don't knock on doors and do that. And I feel that the reason why I do that is because I don't want to protect just one family.
• 46:57
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: I want to protect that entire community. My attitude towards that approach is very prevalent.
• 47:07
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: I don't walk in saying, Mr. And Mrs. Smith. I'd like to help you. I sit there and say, Mr.
• 47:10
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: And Mrs. Smith, you do not want to be the only house with power, and the entire community that you live in is black. If you do that, there will be a right to come over to your house. We need to make sure that every house in this community has their power on when there's a blackout.
• 47:30
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: Would you agree that attitude allows the people that I serve to see how important it is in so many different reasons why we need to approach this from a very large scale approach. Now that's one scenario. The other scenario is, I was growing up, I was Jack of all trades, master of none. You said it. AJ, you're involved in all these things. I believe the siloed approach of the expert in solar, the expert in battery, the expert in hydrogen, if we're not expanding our understanding, knowledge, resources and contacts in the overall solution for the people and communities that we serve, we're not going to give them the full opportunity to solve their problem, meaning, if I don't, if I go to a project with just myself, if I don't Have a telecom guy, a solar guy, a battery guy, it controls. If I don't have all of those things in my back pocket, then I'm not serving the people that I'm trying to help out in the best way. So you know, you have to have those resources, have those connections, reach out to people like me and you that can say, hey, you got to talk to these people. Build that team that can help you serve better.
• 48:46
  Tim Montague: Yeah, that for sure, is one of my superpowers, is connecting people to other knowledgeable experts, both in certain geographies or certain segments of the economy.
• 48:58
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: And seen that, I have seen that a lot with you. Tim, you are really good at that.
• 49:04
  Tim Montague: Hey guys, are you a residential solar installer doing light commercial but wanting to scale into large C&I 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.
• 49:43
  Tim Montague: 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. I also highly encourage you listeners to get involved with your local or regional trade organization here in Illinois, it's the Illinois solar and storage Association. There's a Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association, there's a casa California solar and storage Association, there's a mid atlantic solar and storage Association, etc, etc. These regional organizations are super important for driving forward key legislation in America. It happens at the state level.
• 50:37
  Tim Montague: Really, the state lever is so important in the age of the obbb, if you look around the country, if you look at a map of Sun run, where they're operating, okay, those are the states that have good solar legislation, period full stop.
• 50:54
  Tim Montague: And you know, it's things like community solar VPP legislation allowing, you know, installers will gladly jump on this VPP train if it's allowed, right?
• 51:04
  Tim Montague: The utility has to play ball, and when industry brings the opportunities as you have to the utility and said, Look, you can save money. You can have a more resilient grid. They're going to get on board. So go regional, and, you know, also go national.
• 51:23
  Tim Montague: We're just coming back from Vegas for re plus, and you know, that's a massive trade show, 50,000 energy professionals, and I highly encourage you to go to these larger events as well. AJ, how can our listeners find you? I.
• 51:42
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: LinkedIn is the best way. You know, I'm not I'm not hard to find on LinkedIn. Also, I speak at conferences and conventions, you know, all over the place. I will be at re plus, I think I'll be on stage 910, times. So it's not hard to find me. LinkedIn is probably the best way.
• 52:03
  Tim Montague: Fantastic. Check out all of our content at clean power hour.com check out my book, wired for sun, available on Amazon. You can just go to clean power hour.com go to the book tab to learn more about the book and reach out to me on LinkedIn as well. I love connecting with my listeners. I want to thank AJ Perkins, the microgrid whisper is my new favorite expression for you, and with that, I'll say, let's grow solar and storage. Thanks so much.
• 52:34
  AJ Perkins - Instant ON: AJ, you're welcome, brother. Take care, everybody. Aloha.