Latest / Clean Power Hour / Solar Finance for C&I and Community Solar with Marc Palmer, Conductor Solar | EP191

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Solar Finance for C&I and Community Solar with Marc Palmer, Conductor Solar | EP191 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Marc Palmer: So at the end of the year last year, we launched a big software update, where we basically gave conductor solar a facelift. And we change the look and feel of the platform. And what what that did by, you know, focusing on that is that we really provided a better foundation for future and it's just easier to navigate around.
• 1:09
  Marc Palmer: It's got some more polish proof messaging. But one of the things that I'm really excited about is now it's positioned to do exactly what you talked about much more simply and directly.
• 1:24
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week, want to go deeper into decarbonisation? We do two, we're here to help you understand command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get together we can speed the energy transition.
• 1:52
  Tim Montague: Today on the Clean Power Hour, solar finance for CNI, PPAs, and community solar, my guest today is a repeat guest. He is Mark Palmer, the CEO and founder of a company called Conductor Solar. Welcome back to the show, Mark.
• 2:05
  Marc Palmer: Thanks, Tim. pumped to be here. Excited to pick back up the conversation I think we had about two years ago, almost exactly the last time we chatted on the spot.
• 2:15
  Tim Montague: It's true. It's almost two years. Since we did our first interview, time sure does fly, a lot has happened.
• 2:23
  Tim Montague: The one constant is growth of the solar industry. Good Times bad the industry is on a tear.
• 2:27
  Tim Montague: And we really want our listeners. Well first, thank you listeners for being here, check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review. Reach out to me on LinkedIn, I love to hear from my listeners love to connect with you hope to see you are a plus northeast in mid February in Boston, and go to cleanpowerhour.com/events. And you can find all of our upcoming events, including the webinar that we're doing with you mark.
• 3:04
  Tim Montague: And that's going to be on the topic of CNI, solar PPAs on February 21. But Mark, tell her, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into solar finance? And then why did you start Conductor Solar?
• 3:19
  Marc Palmer: Sure. So the reason I'm here today is I wanted to be in the renewable energy industry, I made a conscious effort to get in here. Haven't looked back ever since I've been in this industry for a little over a dozen years, started my career with Invenergy doing large scale wind and solar and natural gas financing. And working with a really large, you know, well oiled machine, they were still growing pretty quickly then and they still happen. I jumped from Invenergy into the middle market and 2017 with a company called new resource solutions came in there as employee number one was a it was a co founder with NRS. And spent some time in the middle market with an idea that wasn't that dissimilar from Conductor Solar. Really, the idea was to use software to accelerate financing for you know, solar is middle market mainly CNI, at that point in time. We tried to do too much, too much at one time, and it was really hard to do anything really well. And so interest turned into, you know, a brokerage company for a while.
• 4:28
  Marc Palmer: So I got a lot of experience doing brokerage on the financing side for the middle market. And I had a lot of experience in working with solar developers and EPCs. And solar investors across the country really understand a lot of things and reasons why this market has just struggled to take off like everybody knows it can. So that led to Conductor Solar, which is a marketplace for solar developers and solar investors to connect and really targeted way to get quality information and to collaborate with one another to get more projects built and financed. We launched Conductor and really at the start of 2021 had just launched the software a couple of months before we spoke to him at the beginning of 2022. And then we were writing the evolution there where we realized when we launched Conductor, it was a one to one brokerage platform. And we needed to pivot it based on some market feedback to a marketplace. And so that led to the Conductor solar generally as we know it today. It's still stuck in that form, and will continue to do so since about mid 2022 Right before the IRA passed. And then that takes us to where we are today and we can go on a couple different threads but hopefully that gives you some perspective, I just think this shares market and the financing aspect is. So it's so frickin hard to be honest. Like, it's really fun and challenging.
• 5:57
  Marc Palmer: But it's, it's hard for a lot of people and myself included, I've spent a lot of time here. But it's a lot of fun to solve problems and try to make it make it easier and simpler for everyone involved.
• 6:11
  Tim Montague: I mean, on the one hand, it seems to me like, there's more money available for the clean energy transition, oftentimes, then there are projects to fund, we have the technology, we have everything it takes to completely green the grid. But there are points of friction. The you know, the ones that that stand out most, of course, are our interconnection and permitting. But getting a project financed is is a completely non trivial matter, which is why conductor exists.
• 6:48
  Tim Montague: So why don't you give us some more, you know, paint a picture for us? How does a platform like conductor just go to conductor.solar, to check out marks platform, it's free for the for the EPC or the developer looking for a PPA or financing a community solar project? What is it that this platform does for developers and EPCs?
• 7:15
  Marc Palmer: Yeah, let's let's start with setting the stage.
• 7:17
  Marc Palmer: And it's free for anybody to sign up. So investors, developers, anybody can sign up we we get to know our customers well, especially on the developer side, when there's a project that to discuss. And on the investor side, we really screen them before, before we show them any projects, because we want to make sure that they have an ability to execute. So sorry, let's let's take a step back and think about think about the life of a developer. And I'm just going to use the word developer, because I think that encompasses a broader set of the audiences in terms of developers and EPCs. By developer, I mean, someone who's talking with the end customer working to go through the permitting and the site control and making sure this is a project that can be built. Sometimes the developer also is the one who constructs it and is the EPC firm. And sometimes they're not. But generally, I think developer encompasses the the conversations we have with parties about about the projects. And the we have this slide and some of the conductor collateral materials that we talk with people on from a corporate perspective, it's just a developer with their head blowing up, because of all the different conversations they have to navigate for a solar project and take financing out of it, like just going to the customer getting that figured out of getting a deal and then navigating with all the different partners that you have to work with to get a deal and get a project bill of buying equipment, navigating, permitting and working with engineers and interconnection like there's a lot of conversations and expertise that has to come in into play. And some of its in house to the developer a lot of times it's not. So there's a lot of just moving parts. And then you layer on the financing. And it's it's just so hard for developers to understand this ecosystem, and understand what's the right financing product for my customer or my project, who do I talk to? How do I know if they're a good fit? How do I how do I get some mutual trust with them. And so anyways, that's kind of we've gained a lot of appreciation for the developer and what they go through, and all the different things they have to navigate. And so we're really focused on the financing angle to make it a lot easier for these developers to find the right financing, find the right partners and execute, execute really efficiently on those transactions. And we've today we've done almost exclusively these third party on project so PPAs, or if you're in the community solar project, we're all that's they're all third party owned. And that's just where, you know, a separate investor will own the solar array and sell the power to someone in monetize the power.
• 9:58
  Marc Palmer: And so anyways, that all sets the stage to to your question of, you know, how do we how do we make this easier? And I'll just say like, at its core, working with an understanding who the right partner is to finance a project goes such a long way. And that's something we've been focused on doing really well from both sides perspective. And so understanding the key aspects of a transaction of a solar project that is attractive to an investor and vice versa, and understanding those pieces such as geography and project size and credit type and, you know, revenue structure, some of those aspects that there's a sweet spot for that and it's typically not the same investor. And so making sure parties can find each other connect and then you know, try turns out to be who they are, but, you know, stay in their lane really helps unlock a lot of this, and there's more I can go into, but I'll been meandering, so,
• 11:02
  Tim Montague: so there, you know, let's let's just walk through a CNI project, once it gets to a certain stage of maturity, you know, the customer's buying in, you're getting traction with the local authority having jurisdiction, you're getting, you know, site control, interconnection, and decisions have to be made about how a project is going to be financed, you could sell finance the project, you could take a loan, you could get a commercial lease, or you can do a PPA. And, and, you know, from a commercial lending perspective, most of the regional or Super Regional Banks now will finance solar projects.
• 11:50
  Tim Montague: The challenge for an asset owner or host is that, you know, that's going to eat into their ability to finance other projects that they might want, might want to finance for their growth and development, right.
• 12:04
  Tim Montague: So the solar project is competing for resources. And this is potentially a deal killer. There are other aspects of the way solar competes for resources that are deal killers, it's, it's not just money, it's time and talent, etc. But once a once a team agrees, okay, we're going to look for third party financing. This doesn't encumber the the host, almost that all right, it's very light on their books, so to speak, they're going to, they're going to host a solar array on their facility that's going to be owned by a third party. And then they're just going to buy the power from that project. And the the owner of that project, the PPA provider is highly motivated to keep the project up and running.
• 12:57
  Tim Montague: Because if it's not producing electricity, they're not making any money, it's not cash flowing. And so you know, they're gonna take good care of that project and keep it in tip top shape running smoothly, unless something is very, very wrong. So at that point, then all of a sudden, the team is in a position where they need to find a financier, someone like yourself, who will offer a PPA.
• 13:24
  Tim Montague: And so what is it that people need to understand, though, about finding a successful financier? Or financing a project successfully?
• 13:40
  Marc Palmer: Yeah, well, I'll give you some examples of how how we see different developers across the market use use our software in our, our platform, because I think that'll help illustrate, you know, some of the things that are important and finding, you know, finding financing for the end customer.
• 13:59
  Marc Palmer: So we, we typically see solar developers come into Conductor Solar looking for financing, at one of two stages, they're either early stage and I'll start with the CNI market, the early stage, so they have a customer is interested in solar, and I've had a couple of conversations. And they, the customers either indicated that they want to go forward with a PPA, or they want to evaluate a PPA option. And so that's kind of the early stage. The other stages, when a developer has navigated all those conversations, they've, they're a little bit more advanced in terms of their sophistication, they have a big they net, they negotiate the PPA with the customer. And they're just looking for an end investor to pay for construction and own operator. So two very different points in the lifecycle of when we see these projects come in.
• 14:49
  Marc Palmer: But we see a lot of developers come into our platform, and they put in the information about their project. And they, they use it to help with their proposals and conversations with the customer. We have, you know what our unique position is that we see different investors and different bids across the country, to you know, for for different projects. And so we have a really good handle on pricing and what the expectations will be for a PPA rate for different project sizes with different customers in different parts of the country.
• 15:21
  Marc Palmer: And so what we've done is we've taken that information and where we set the market and we provide that back and just an estimated range for developers so they can get with a click of a button, a PPA range that will you know, 90% of the time, we actually see that being the transapical range. So what it does is it helps the early stage filtering to understand if a customer you know is interested in the PPA at a certain price range and so on.
• 15:50
  Marc Palmer: Some people use it with a customer directly, they click a button and update some inputs of saying, you know, if you want a 25 year PPA or 20 year PPA, like, here are the different rates that you might see. And then then when the customer is ready to go forward with the PPA, we'll help them get a firm quote, from an end investor, somebody is going to own and operate this for the long term.
• 16:09
  Marc Palmer: So that's just, you know, one part of the conversation that we're engaged in a lot and try to get and, and not have to lean on, you know, a process of, you know, being out to the market and talking with different parties. When they are ready for that, it's, it's really important to find the right person who, the right investor who wants to own and operate that project that solar project.
• 16:38
  Marc Palmer: And just because one investor wanted to own and operate that solar project last year, doesn't mean that same investor wants to do it this year, because maybe they've changed their thesis, they are in a different geography, they want to do a bigger site, not that smaller site anymore, or vice versa.
• 16:54
  Marc Palmer: Maybe they're more focused on their mission opposed to just financing any project. Maybe they don't want to touch store at Danner. Now, there's a myriad of reasons why investors will, will or won't be interested in the project. And it's just hard for the developer to navigate that. So hopefully, that gives some some insight into how people, you know, start to go through that process with their end customer. And using Conductor as a way to do that.
• 17:19
  Tim Montague: You mentioned storage. And in some markets, storage is becoming very important, certainly in California. Here in Illinois, we have a generous storage incentive to earn $50 per kWh.
• 17:28
  Tim Montague: When you're doing a solar plus storage project, there's no reason theoretically, you can't do a PPA or third party ownership. But that's more complicated. Have you gotten into that niche?
• 17:46
  Marc Palmer: Yeah, we've had a number of conversations with it, we've we've worked on a couple solar and storage behind the meter PPAs. But they're tricky.
• 17:51
  Marc Palmer: There's not a tried and true template of how, who has what obligations and responsibilities over the life of a contract.
• 18:01
  Marc Palmer: Because, you know, just one inherent like, push and pull of this is the solar investors. And take a step back. The software provider really controls how this storage gets monetized. And so usually, it's maybe it's time of use arbitrage, or, you know, there's some different ways that this storage can provide value to the project, but it's usually relying on the software operating at the right with the right signals. And if that doesn't work well or as advertised, then there's a ton of value lost to the project and the investors don't want to hold that bag in the end customer doesn't necessarily want to hold the bag either. And so it's been a little tricky in terms of what the obligations are of the owner to make sure the right value is realized. Whereas with a solar only PPA more kilowatt hours are produced, the customer buys more kilowatt hours and they pay for that as it's produced but the storage add some wrinkles that are a little bit more performance based that are a little hard for people to judge and understand and estimate how it's gonna change over time from you know, oh nm perspective. The
• 19:15
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• 21:10
  Tim Montague: So to that point, you know, you've got a project, and then you're putting it in one end of the conductor pipeline, what is on the back end of the platform that people need to understand.
• 22:17
  Tim Montague: Because typically, you're, you know, I come from the BBC World, you're just throwing some statistics in, you know, the project size, and you know, some information about what the customer is paying for power, because you want to offer the customer a discount, it has to be financially compelling in some way. But it's a black box on the other side, and then a number gets spit out. What do people need to understand about what what you're actually doing both in a semi automated or not fashion?
• 22:54
  Marc Palmer: Yes, it's understanding some of the pieces that are important for pricing that solar project and then making sure that the expectations and kind of what happens after that price is given are comparable, so that all parties continue operating under the same pricing assumptions. And so when you think about what's important for investors, and in our platform, we match projects with up to five investors. And so it's not a bulletin board concept where there's, you know, they're able to just go bid on any project they want, we're very targeted in terms of how we connect parties and, and make sure the right conversations are being had. So the things that are important for those investors are really looking at the revenues and expenses and different risks associated with that for a project. And so, you know, a core core one is obviously what's the cost to build it, making sure the cost to build it reflects the, the needs that an investor is going to have, I always look at these, you know, for first time, developers or EPCs, who want to navigate a PPA, as hopefully they see it as a really good learning opportunity, it's going to be challenging, because it's different than what they've been used to before, because they haven't really had somebody looking over their shoulder and providing input on a lot of the details that they undergo for engineering and construction, and, you know, forecasting, production, stuff like that. But these solar investors often own, you know, 100 200 300 Solar assets that they have lived with, and have gone through all these experiences and understand what results in a best producing system for them. And so there's a lot of things that they are particular about, that maybe the solar developers and EPCs aren't as used to. So some of those things are getting scrutinized pretty heavily on the production, and understanding, you know, how many kilowatt hours are going to be produced?
• 24:55
  Marc Palmer: And why is that the right number? And what are some of the assumptions that go under that like shading and soiling and snow losses, as well, as you know, what dataset are you using for your actual radius to come in. And we've got an integration with DNV really big global engineering firm that provides some validation for us and for for everybody in terms of the production factor and making sure it's in the right range for that project. And that geography until and Asmath. And then there's on the engineering and in construction side. So some of the things that you know, most investors want that sometimes the developers don't account for is a good way to monitor the system and understand if it's producing as it should. And so, you know, likely needing a weather station and having also energy, you know, be the monitoring platform opposed to maybe using solar edge or some other platform that's less ubiquitous because the investors again, they have to have to deal with 100 of these or 200 of these, so they want some consistency. Those are some of the things that that are important. And then thinking about, is it a financeable project? And what's the right?
• 26:07
  Marc Palmer: What's the right financing for that project? We're primarily focused on PPAs and this third party ownership model, but sometimes it's a customer loan, sometimes. Sometimes there are recurrent options. Sometimes you can transfer the EITC is it's a new new feature, thanks to the inflation Reduction Act. So we're really looking to be be the platform that a developer can go to and help navigate, you know, what's the best financing option for this project, and how can I get that done? Simply, and so the little peek in terms of you know, some of the things we're looking to do over time.
• 26:40
  Marc Palmer: But we know, we know, there's a lot of challenges in navigating not just the PPA world, which we're continuing to work on improvements on standardization, automation, and just providing real time feedback to people.
• 26:54
  Marc Palmer: But also PPAs aren't always the right option. So making sure that we can we can help support them. When when they're not.
• 27:02
  Tim Montague: Let's tease apart if we could public entities versus private entities, because I know that, you know, a large percentage of the consumers of solar PPAs are public schools, municipal facilities, you know, wastewater treatment facilities.
• 27:20
  Tim Montague: But what is the difference at face value? As far as you're concerned? What should developers and EPCs know about bringing public entities versus private entities?
• 27:34
  Marc Palmer: Yeah, so thinking about that question on the financing side, and, you know, for a PPA, is this group organization gonna be around for 2030 years to pay their bills?
• 27:49
  Marc Palmer: And when you think about a public entity, the answer is almost always yes. It's pretty rare that it seems like they won't be. Now these public entities can sometimes be more difficult to navigate through the contracting, and how you actually get the right approvals in place to, for them to sign up to go solar and sign whatever, whatever financing arrangement that works for them. So there's a trade off there. But generally, they're, they're pretty attractive customers for, for solar investors. When you look at the private entities, that's a little more nebulous.
• 28:26
  Marc Palmer: To figure out it's really look at some of the things just, again, will this entity, does this entity seem like it'll be around for 20 to 30 years to pay their bills? And so how long have they been around before?
• 28:42
  Marc Palmer: How big of a company are they?
• 28:42
  Marc Palmer: How do they how do they operate and stay in business? So, you know, for example, like a nonprofit, like NGO, like a religious institution, you know, a lot of these organizations, churches, synagogues, they've been around for 100 years. And so they, they figure it out, right, they they raise the funds, if they need to, they have a way that they've conducted themselves from an organization perspective that encourages, and really provides confidence that they'll be around for another 30 years. And a lot of businesses are the same, they've been around for 4050 years, where you start running into some challenges on some private organizations, or when you have things like one off, like one of the pieces, like think about a McDonald's in a McDonald's franchise, right?
• 29:29
  Marc Palmer: The franchise isn't necessarily McDonald's, corporate, it's its own entity. And it's kind of by itself. Now, McDonald's, I don't think is going anywhere. But that specific location becomes you know, exactly the one somebody is focused on. Same with like a hotel chain, like a Holiday Inn is not going to be necessarily owned by corporate holiday. And it's going to be on by California holiday and 123 LLC. And so you need to look at who's actually standing behind that. And what can navigate but the private organizations can often move more quickly. And if you're, you just want to be talking to the decision maker, I think is the other piece we found is when somebody's navigating, you know, an internal champion, but they're not the decision maker, they're not a C level executive, a lot of times it can be really hard to get that buy in. And there's just a like a lot of there's a lot of risk of gaps for communication challenges and things that can fall through the cracks. So that's the other thing we've seen in terms of success from the developers we work with on supporting some of the early stage opportunities.
• 30:31
  Tim Montague: And then there's the question. This is a perennial question, really, of local incentives. There's, you know, 30 different solar markets in the US, largely driven by what's going on at the state level. And, and we have good federal incentives right, the ITC being the big one. And with with with attars, you could you could hit 60% with the ITC, I mean, it's it's very, very generous.
• 31:04
  Marc Palmer: But yeah, to navigate those incentives, and yeah,
• 31:08
  Tim Montague: how to how do you as as conductor, tackle this myriad? It seems like it could be a little overwhelming to to operate in so many places with so many nuanced markets. Yeah,
• 31:24
  Marc Palmer: we're, I mean, we're dangerous in most markets, and we generally the core of project finances holds true regardless of what the incentives are, but there's different programs and structures and it's, it's hard for us to be the expert in all these markets, and we're not, we wouldn't claim to be but But the key is knowing who is and making sure you're working with somebody who is an expert in that market. And that's where, you know, the right matches really come into play. So, you know, the Illinois programs, and we're both we see each other in Illinois quite often it's, it's a great program, but it's got some, it's got some unique aspects to it in terms of the program and what, how, how long the asset contracts are paid out for. Something that I think I'm really excited about. And we saw at the end of the year, last year, we launched a big software update, where we basically gave conductor solar a facelift. And we change the look and feel of the platform. And what what that did by focusing on that is that we really provided a better foundation for the future. And it's just easier to navigate around, it's got some more polish, improved messaging. But one of the things that I'm really excited about is now it's positioned to do exactly what you talked about much more simply and directly. So thinking about the data capture and being intelligent on a project, you know, most most investors have a intake form, it's an Excel sheet, and you fill in things and you try to make it work. But then when you have these local incentives, it's hard to communicate that well and tease out the right information. So it just results in more communication gaps. But what we have with conductor is, as you put an information, we collect different data based on what you tell us about the project. And so just to give you some examples, you know, one, one concept would be you're working on a project from California, right, we should ask, is this nem 2.0? Or nem? 3.0? Are you exempt from the prevailing wage requirements that went to effect on one 124. And we can keep general pulses on that we don't have to know all the details, but we just want to we know people are asking that question.
• 33:35
  Marc Palmer: So we can ask it. But we don't need to ask it for an Illinois project. But for Illinois, you know, we can tease out details about the adjustable block program. So right now, the way we've set it up is we collect things really differently based on a CNI behind the meter project versus the community solar project. And we also can can take information for ITC transfers and all those just require different data points to communicate the right aspects of the project. And then the one of the things I'll mention that I really like our position for is, as, as we get more penetration in these markets, and just continue to expand our nationwide presence, we become a great place to find some of these, you know, hyper local incentives. So an example there is I sit on the advisory board for the solar Finance Fund. It's a central Appalachian organization that provides grants for CNI projects, and West Virginia, in parts of Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and things like that, with that group, a lot of conversations we're having is like how do we reach more of these CNI projects across our region? We have a way that we can kind of serve that up in a just a manner that can say, Hey, did you know that your project is eligible for a 20% grant, and it's really easy to get. So these are things that I think we can help help the contractors also navigate and kind of learn from each other.
• 35:00
  Marc Palmer: As you know, some people venture into new markets and and others are working on working on existing markets.
• 35:07
  Tim Montague: I want to point our listeners to cleanpowerhour.com Go to the events tab, we're hosting an event with Mark Palmer and Nick Pellegrini of Solarz energy. And the title is CNI, solar PPAs best practices and success stories. So this is going to be effectively a masterclass on the CNI solar PPA. So if this conversation has whetted your appetite, check out cleanpowerhour.com/events and register today. Mark, we're gonna see each other in Boston in a few weeks, look forward to seeing many of our colleagues, including EPCs, and developers and technology companies. What else should our listeners know about conductor? And and, you know, please stop by the conductor booth at Ari plus northeast as well.
• 36:01
  Marc Palmer: Yeah, I'll leave a drop a couple of things that they should know about conductor. One is, we just we just joined forces with James Coombs, who formerly from painted rock capital. He's on board and what James represents is much more depth on the developer and EPC journey with their conversations with customers and really understanding their world and navigating the tariffs and just some of the challenges they go through very, very well. And so we're really excited to have James on board to support the CNI market, specifically, so that's one another is that we're last year we made a decision to Become a preferred partner with NAVSUP. And we were at the trade show last year at NABCEP. And we're going to be there again in Raleigh. That's been a really fun experience for us meeting and getting to know a lot of the partners and NABCEP, who go through the certification program and understanding just their their world and the more technical side and such a neat program and makes sense for the industry. And so won't be there again in Raleigh, and would love to see anybody who comes there.
• 37:09
  Marc Palmer: And then the last piece I'll mention is, we're spending a lot of time on the ITC transfer market, we see that being a big gap in terms of smaller projects being just having having a market at all. And so we've historically seen, you know, you need to have $5 million in tax credits to be able to transact and support support the costs that go along with it. It's the market has been operating, operating. Like they have institutionally meeting these required thresholds. And all this belts and suspenders and whistles and we get like, there's there's a lot of reasons for that. But as a result, there's not you can't just sell a million dollar task credit, and get a decent price for it or any price oftentimes. So we're spending a lot of time and effort and resources to we should have a really neat solution for the market.
• 38:08
  Marc Palmer: Probably in early q2. So I was just wanted to say to stay tuned, we're still supporting some ITC transfers on a one off basis in the interim, but we're excited to federate and take this to the next level soon.
• 38:24
  Tim Montague: Very well. We'll check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please reach out to me on LinkedIn or at Cleanpowerhour.com. I love hearing from my listeners. And with that I'll say let's grow solar and storage. I thank you so much Mark Palmer, how can our listeners find you?
• 38:45
  Marc Palmer: Yeah, you can you can reach out to me directly mark@conductor.solar. Or you can go to our website, as Tim mentioned, it's it's http:conductor.solar. You can find out more information about the company you can sign up for the platform and the link on the top right. or shoot me an email and happy to have a conversation.
• 39:07
  Tim Montague: Excellent. Well, thank you all for being here today. I really appreciate your listenership. And again, let's grow solar and storage. I'm Tim Montague. Take care, Mark.
• 39:16
  Marc Palmer: Thanks, Sam. See in Boston. Hey, listeners.
• 39:19
  Tim Montague: This is Tim, I want to give a shout out to all of you. I do this for you 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.
• 39:32
  Tim Montague: 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 mean 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.
• 40:29
  Tim Montague: We have chin power systems, the leading three phase string inverter manufacturer in North America. So check out CBS America. But we are very actively looking for additional support to make this show work.
• 40:42
  Tim Montague: And you see here our media kit.
• 40:48
  Tim Montague: With all the sponsor benefits and statistics about the show.
• 40:51
  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 are 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.
• 41:27
  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