Latest / Clean Power Hour / Accelerating Clean Energy Deployment and Innovation with Dr. Becca Jones-Albertus | EP176

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Accelerating Clean Energy Deployment and Innovation with Dr. Becca Jones-Albertus | EP176 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Becca Jones: We need to be getting the next generation of our workforce and the current workforce really excited about the opportunities through the clean energy transition. Don't think climate change is one of the biggest problems of our time. And so I, you know, I can't think of, you know, more impactful work to be doing. And we need great people doing it and in all types of careers with all types of backgrounds. So the federal government is an incredibly great place to be tackling some of this work. But we need a great pipeline in the in the private sector and state and local governments and communities as well. Are you
• 1:25
  intro: 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, I want to go deeper into decarbonisation. We do two, we're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to together we can speed the energy transition.
• 1:53
  Tim Montague: Today on the Clean Power Hour, accelerating deployment and advancing technology in the clean energy transition. I'm so happy to have a repeat guest Her name is Becca Albertus Jones, she is the head of the Solar Energy Technologies Office at the Department of Energy. Welcome to the show.
• 2:10
  Tim Montague: Thanks, Tom. It's
• 2:11
  Becca Jones: great to be back.
• 2:12
  Tim Montague: I should say Welcome back. And it is, as we were just saying in the pre show, it's heady days here in 2023. We're a year into the IRA, the inflation Reduction Act. And that is making huge waves in terms of reshoring of manufacturing, and reshoring and onshoring. You know, I've had several companies on this show, American battery factory, fryer, another battery company that are building energy storage factories in the United States.
• 2:46
  Tim Montague: And two years ago, that was not even a glimmer of hope in their eye, probably because the economics didn't quite work. But now it's game on. We're building tons and tons of giga factories.
• 3:00
  Tim Montague: We're on a path to perhaps deploying 60 gigawatts of solar panel manufacturing in the United States now, in the next five or so years. And that is really game changing. So give our listeners just a quick introduction to yourself, for anyone who doesn't know you and what your office does. And then we will further explore all of the nooks and crannies of what your your office does.
• 3:31
  Becca Jones: Fantastic. That's about Solar Energy Technologies Office at the Department of Energy has, we have a budget of about 300, a little over $300 million a year to accelerate solar technology development and provide innovation to spur and accelerate solar deployments. So we address things from new solar panel technologies, next generation inverters to innovation to speed and technical assistance and partnership programs to speed things like interconnection, queues, as well as helps support us manufacturers and growing small businesses. And working to ensure that the benefits that come from solar energy deployment are equitably spread across the US and especially focusing on how under resourced and underserved communities can access the job opportunities, the cost savings, and other meaningful benefits that can come from solar deployment.
• 4:35
  Tim Montague: I, I am fond of saying everyone needs a roof, but everyone doesn't need a solar roof. And the other thing that I like to say is that, you know, today only a fraction of Americans have solar or storage of battery. In 10 years, many, many more Americans will have those things in their homes or on their homes. And, you know, we're we're looking at perhaps a 50% solar grid by 2050. Just solar right, that's just solar, there's going to be a lot of wind and and storage. But so when it comes to let's geek out for a second on solar panel technology, I just heard a podcast about this professor in Australia who originated some of the popular technology Topcon being the latest solar, you know, silicon solar technology that all of the solar panel manufacturers are now integrating into their products.
• 5:40
  Tim Montague: But what is it what is the role of of your office in that realm and and how does that interface with with industry.
• 5:54
  Becca Jones: So we support a lot of research, development and demonstration work on solar panels technologies. So that's both technologies and silicon like IBC technology. It's also thin film technologies, cadmium telluride and prostate cells. We support development of tandem solar cells, which, you know, maybe technology of the future, as well as new approaches to modules as well. We supported some of the first shingled solar cell development by Khagendra and all the up the supply chain, so new ways to purify poly silicon, new superstrate configurations to make more effective glass or thin film panels, that whole variety, we are open to innovation that can support more cost effective higher performing solar across the entire supply chain.
• 6:53
  Tim Montague: I, you know, I do follow, for example, prop skites, and tandem solar cell manufacturing. And there's, you know, a growing cadre of companies that are, that are chasing those technologies.
• 7:05
  Tim Montague: Probably only some fraction of them will truly, you know, see the light of day and and get traction at scale. That's one of the interesting things about the transition that we're in and the time period that we're in, we truly have the technology that we need it to completely green the grid, and remove those 40 gigatons of co2 pollution from the economy. And that's a wonderful thing. And now we just need to as Jigar Shah likes to say deploy, deploy, deploy. And so it's a of course, we need to evolve, continue to evolve the technology, it's you know, it's taking up the percentage efficiency of the solar cells and the price, right, we're improving the technology, and we're reducing the cost of all the technology at the same time.
• 8:03
  Tim Montague: It's both and, and then the adoption, we call this the cost adoption curve. And as you, in general, as you double the adoption of a technology, the price will come down somewhere around 25%. And the price of solar panels has come down dramatically in the last 15 years. Something like 90% or more. And so that's that's one of the fueling factors that, you know, underlies this, this, this tidal wave, so to speak. I wonder if we should if we should bring in the the influence of legislation like the inflation Reduction Act here? How does that change the landscape, for your office and your work?
• 8:56
  Becca Jones: Yeah. And just to comment on what you said before that, so bringing the cost down of installing solar, and we like to focus on the levelized cost of energy, because it includes not just the solar panels, but the soft costs for installing the system in the lifetime as well. Today, solar is one of the it is in many parts of the country, that cheapest form of new electricity generation. But if we really want to decarbonize the grid by 2035, which is President Biden's goal, we need to rapidly deploy solar. And we know that the more we drive down the cost, the more rapidly it will make sense to deploy solar all across the country. And so continuing to drive that cost down, whether that be through better and more efficient solar panels, whether that is through, you know, reducing installation costs, and tax credits through Ira are another big piece of that, that spurs additional deployment. So the inflation Reduction Act has been truly transformative. You know, would Mac and vnaf have estimated that deployment will be about 30% higher with the extension of the investment tax credit and production tax credit, that are part of IRA and that is obviously incredibly exciting and a huge impact for the industry. It also brings a big impact on underserved communities with bonuses for deploying solar and wind and other technologies and energy communities with additional bonuses that are possible and adders for other low income community work. So there's an important focus there as well.
• 10:40
  Becca Jones: I'm ensuring that all parts of American can benefit from this transition, which I think is really important, but the is transformative desire, isn't it?
• 10:49
  Becca Jones: As much as it's going to increase deployment and also manufacturing, which we haven't talked too much about yet, I do want to say that it's still not enough to get us all the way to a decarbonize grid by 2035, which is something we're very focused on, ideally. And so we continue to need more innovation, and more partnerships to work on addressing some of these sticky problems like interconnection, like citing issues, while continuing to improve technology, if we really want to decarbonize the grid that quickly, still more work to be done even in, even in the back round of this incredibly exciting time.
• 11:31
  Tim Montague: Yeah. And I'm just curious, do you get involved in some of those other areas, like you mentioned, interconnection, because that, you know, there's there is a backlog of, I don't know, 2000
• 11:49
  Becca Jones: gigawatts of solar in the interconnection queue.
• 11:51
  Becca Jones: 2000 gigawatts. 1000 gigawatts of solar. And those numbers are even higher when you include the other generation services. Yeah, so so all the solar we've been needs to deploy to decarbonize the greatest, currently sitting in interconnection queues, today, but as we know, with those processes, they're incredibly long, average times to be four years or more. And because they're long, and the costs are not predictable, we know developers, it's a horrible cycle where then developers put more projects in those queues than they ever intend to develop, because they don't know which ones will come out and make sense. So those aren't the 1000 gigawatts that are in the queue today, aren't the, you know, 1000 gigawatts that we will deploy? Most likely, but it's an incredibly high and powerful number. And so yes, we have started a partnership program called interconnection innovation Exchange, or itu x, which is attempting to bring together all the key stakeholders from utilities to community organizations to the solar industry, and others, bringing them to the table, solar and wind and energy storage, it's not just a solar, bring them all to the table and figure out how we can make interconnection processes faster, fair, more transparent.
• 13:04
  Becca Jones: And so we are really, we're in the process of developing a roadmap for how we get to these goals. And we'll be putting funding together for stakeholder groups to work in these areas as well. And so it's it's definitely a focus, the Department of Energy, DOE use Grid deployment office is is really thinking hard about how they can impact interconnection as well.
• 13:28
  Tim Montague: Very good. I wonder if you could paint a broad picture, you know, when you look at your budget, how does it break down around kind of, you know, hard technology development and versus other types of programs? You know, I see here on your website, open funding opportunities. I'm just going to read this list because this is I think, very interesting to my listeners, advanced us thin film solar volatile photovoltaics, solar thermal fuels and thermal energy storage via concentrated solar thermal energy, bipartisan infrastructure, last silicon solar manufacturing and dual use photovoltaics incubator and materials operation and recycling of photovoltaics. That dual use Is that referring to things like agriculture tax,
• 14:17
  Becca Jones: it is yeah.
• 14:20
  Tim Montague: So the the breakdown the pie chart in some big chunks for us, how does the How does your budget break down?
• 14:28
  Becca Jones: Yes, roughly speaking, we have well, so we have kind of five budgetary buckets and roughly equivalent in size, but not not exactly, but roughly equivalent. One, which we haven't talked about really today. So I'll start with is concentrating solar thermal power, you just mentioned one of our funding opportunities there.
• 14:46
  Becca Jones: And so we're investing in how concentrating solar thermal technologies can be used both for electricity production and coupled with long duration thermal energy storage, which is a great strategy for how we have you know, de length storage, long duration storage, as well as it can be used for industrial purposes by using the heat that's produced directly. So that's one area of emphasis for us. Second is photovoltaic technologies, where we are investing in advances in performance for modules and other system hardware, as well as a big emphasis on how we improve lifetime and reliability. PV technologies today have increasing system lifetimes. Many systems are expected now to be 3035 years but we want them to be 50 years long because there's a lot of value in having even longer lifetimes and we think the tech now algae can do it. So that's a big emphasis of that portfolio as well. So it's not just developing prostate silicone tandem cells, but also looking to how we can get system lengths of the deers. We have a systems integration budget area, which is focused on how solar technologies can support the reliability, resilience and security of the grid. We're working on grid forming and birders helping grid planners and operators understand what it could mean to operate a grid that is 80%, wind and solar and battery storage and how you can do that and maintain or even improve reliability, how you can use distributed solar and other energy resources to improve community resilience, which is something we're really excited about whether integrated in micro grids or other technologies. Our fourth budget area is focused on supporting small businesses, entrepreneurs, and other elements of the private sectors. And that starts with funding for folks who just have a really great idea that they want to turn into a company all the way through funding for pilot scale, manufacturing, that should help folks demonstrate technologies so that they could be well positioned to then go to our loan program office for a loan to scale into manufacturing. And then our last areas are soft cost program, which is both where we are addressing these sticky challenges that continue to grow around citing permitting in our connection, and is also where we focus on strategies to increase access to meaningful benefits for solar, especially through community solar and other initiatives, and also where we focus on workforce training, and enabling a diverse and talented workforce to take the hundreds of 1000s of jobs that are going to be created over this decade as we continue to scale up solar deployment.
• 17:52
  Tim Montague: You know, we reported this morning on my news roundup that I do on Thursdays about the climate corps that the Biden administration just announced the goal being to bring 20,000 Young Americans into the energy transition and conservation industries. Surely, that's going to be a good thing for your programs? No,
• 18:20
  Becca Jones: absolutely. Yes, we need to be getting the next generation of our workforce and the current workforce really excited about the opportunities through the clean energy transition. I don't think climate change is one of the biggest problems of our time.
• 18:35
  Becca Jones: And so I you know, I can't think of you know, more impactful work to be doing, and we need great people doing it and in all types of careers with all types of backgrounds. So the federal government is an incredibly great place to be tackling some of this work. But we need a great pipeline in the in the private sector and state and local governments, communities as well.
• 18:59
  Tim Montague: The last time we spoke, we spent a lot of time talking about the soft cost of solar, which is a very hot topic for our industry in, you know, some of my audience certainly knows that solar, just take residential solar, for example is, you know, $1 water more expensive in the United States than it is in places like Australia and Germany. And so I'm just curious, do you have an update on that? How is that going the rollout of that platform called solar up, which is a platform for hJS and installers to expedite permitting. How's that going?
• 19:38
  Becca Jones: Solar app is going?
• 19:38
  Becca Jones: Well, it's so solar app is, as you said, a software platform for local governments to automate the evaluation and issuance of solar permits. And we have launched that platform now we have I think, 60 or so local governments that are currently using the platform and a pipeline of several 100 who are interested and learn in the process of learning more. We're really excited about the opportunity for solar app to save time, save money and help to increase rates of residential solar adoption. The fact that we have more than 10,000 local governments who do separate permitting for solar is one of the key reasons why it's so hard for us to get to the cost that they have in Australia or in Germany, where they have national regulations or in some cases don't need to do permitting at all. And it's a very different landscape. So solar app is certainly helping to make that landscape more uniform by having this single platform
• 21:42
  Tim Montague: Has it been easier or harder to get the solar app to spread in the US market than you, then you expected?
• 21:53
  Becca Jones: It has been a little harder, I think, in part because our local governments are so tax, they have so many different priorities they're trying to juggle and balance and work on. And just taking the time to, you know, enroll and sign up for a new technology, even though they you know, they want to do it. It's just, it's challenging with all the other things that they're juggling, and so it takes longer. So that has been a challenge. So we are seeing adoption, but it is it is a little slower than we had hoped. Yep.
• 22:27
  Tim Montague: So thermal technology, you know, I've had some very interesting companies on the show both involved in cold energy storage and heat, like a hot brick battery company called Rondo energy, which uses a thermal resistance, or electric resistance heating element, which is what your toaster has in it. And, and then they so you take clean electrons from a solar farm or wind farm, pump them into this thermal resistance. Heater combined with a bunch of bricks and you have a heat battery, then you can use that heat to generate steam to turn a turbine or generate heat for industrial processes, whatever you want to do food processing, even still manufacture at 1600 degrees C heat, it's an amazing thing. But constantly the program that you mentioned focused on concentrated solar thermal, which makes me wonder, are you talking about Helius you know, a an array of heliostats or a trough that focuses light on a pipe with heat transfer fluid or flush that out for us if you would, yep,
• 23:44
  Becca Jones: most of our focus that are on what we call generation three concentrating solar thermal systems, which are a set of heliostats or mirrors that are all around a tower. And so they focus that light onto a tower. In that tower, the light energy gets converted to heat and carried by some sort of heat transfer medium. And our focus right now is on particle systems. Some folks are even looking at Sand. So you then you heat up these particles, and they hold the heat, and they can be stored relatively cheaply and for relatively long durations, many many hours pretty efficiently. And then that heat can be used either to drive a turbine or to use it directly in an industrial process. So that's the bulk of our work for some lower temperature applications.
• 24:36
  Becca Jones: Other configurations like trough based reflectors with tubes are still in use, but more economical way to generate higher temperature heat is in these towers.
• 24:52
  Tim Montague: And, you know, Ivanpah is a famous project in the California desert, right on the border between California and Nevada. You know, that does just this, right? It is a huge array, there's, I think two towers, with arrays of heliostats and these big towers.
• 25:08
  Tim Montague: And they they they're very visible. They're they're very bright, collecting a lot of solar energy. But the cost of the energy that you are able to produce from those projects was not cost competitive with photovoltaics right. And so we saw the field gets swept by just plain old PV and solar and so thermal solar, solar concentrating technologies have kind of stagnated a bit. Now I have noticed a resurgence I had a company on the show called Phoenix, which is bringing a Swedish solar trough technology.
• 25:50
  Tim Montague: It's it's a trough inside a glass case. So it reduces exposure to the elements by doing you know, just it's a you know, a reflective trough and making heat for industrial processes. So, what is the future do you think for solar, concentrated thermal, concentrating
• 26:15
  Becca Jones: solar thermal like Ivanpah that does not incorporate energy storage, we don't see a future for it's not going to out compete PV but where there is an exciting value proposition is when you couple that with long duration thermal energy storage. And you know, this is where we're talking about, you know, 1520, maybe even longer hours of storage, beyond which We can do economically today with PV and batteries. And that thermal storage can be quite cost effective and pairs very naturally with a concentrating solar thermal plant. And so that's the opportunity we see is pairing those plants with thermal energy storage, and then again, either generating electricity or heat for industrial processes, or perhaps both. There are not a lot of plans that are running today with thermal energy storage. And we are developing a test facility at Sandia National Laboratories right now to test out this generation three technology. We also have an exciting demonstration project we're supporting with Helio Gen to build a next generation CSP plant. And so there, there is exciting technology out there as we couple these with storage.
• 27:30
  Becca Jones: And that's that's the future we see both for electricity and also for the industrial sector.
• 27:37
  Becca Jones: Very
• 27:37
  Tim Montague: cool. Yeah, the theme of storage was very prominent at RT plus a few weeks ago, that's the big Solar Energy Conference here in the United States. 40,000 people convened on Las Vegas, a lot of battery technologies, primarily batteries at this show. But but it's really all about storage, because storage is so flexible.
• 27:56
  Tim Montague: And and you know, you solar is is kind of one dimensional, it produces solar PV produce electricity. Storage has so many value stocks. And so it's it's just incredible, and and it provides resiliency, you know, in the case of micro grids, and let's talk about that, because I had a very interesting guest on the show recently named Craig Lewis, who is the founder and executive director of a nonprofit called Clean coalition. If you haven't seen that episode, check that out, go to cleanpowerhour.com, check out all of our content, please give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. And tell your friends about the show, we want more. And we can have more listeners, but we need your help. So please tell your friends about the show. So the clean coalition is facilitating the development of community scale micro grids. These are micro grids that serve 1000s or 10s of 1000s of residents, not just you know, individual buildings, but there are it's a spectrum. And but I truly, the light bulb was definitely going off for me that the future of the grid is going to be community scale micro grids, because it's just so nice to have that ability to Island, from the greater grid, for whatever reason, whatever that crisis is, there's going to be a crisis, whether it's a fire, or flood, or hurricane, or, you know, an earthquake, whatever, right. And, and so the use of those dollars in building infrastructure just makes so much more sense to me. But talk to us about micro grids, and how your office sees that opportunity.
• 29:51
  Becca Jones: Really excited about the opportunity for distributed solar and storage in micro grids and potentially in other models as well to really improve community resilience.
• 30:00
  Becca Jones: You know, the traditional model for how you have power in the event of an outage is to have some sort of backup generator.
• 30:05
  Becca Jones: So here's a generator, it's running on fuel fuel that you probably have to store and say, you have to test the generator regularly or you run the rest of it, it actually won't work in the time you need it. But it's a whole separate system with solar and energy storage, you can install that you're using it on a daily basis to produce electricity that's grid connected, support the benefit of the grid, but then if the grid goes down, you can harness the same resources through micro grid, you know, or potentially in the future, maybe we'll have other technologies, that community scale that go beyond a single micro grid, there's linked to micro grids, that can then provide power to the most critical loads in times of an outage. And you know, we think it's incredibly promising to have that energy generation close to load, you're no longer sensitive to what happens on a transmission system or larger scale. But you've been really localized that power for again, the most most critical loads.
• 31:03
  Becca Jones: The clean coalition has done some really interesting thinking about how to differentiate between loads. And I think to help folks who are doing this planning, think about well, you know, how much of their load? Do they want to be able to support in the event of an outage? Is it just the most critical kind of tier one loads? Or is it all loads or something in between because that changes the calculation of what you build.
• 31:25
  Becca Jones: But it's a whole new value stream that I think is really exciting. It's, you know, the way of the future because we can have this generation providing value during normal operation and then also allowing us to have keep the lights on, whenever we have an outage till the grid comes back out.
• 31:49
  Tim Montague: And in our last few minutes together, let's talk about workforce and diversity.
• 31:53
  Tim Montague: I, I spoke to some of your colleagues in Vegas. I can't remember their names, but it was two young women. And we had a brief conversation about about this interview. And I was like, we should probably talk about diversity and women in Seoul.
• 32:09
  Tim Montague: Because you look around that trade show. And women are definitely a minority, as well as people of color. And and I know that there are numerous initiatives now. Both at the DOA E and SCA, the Solar Energy Industries Association, which is our our major industry association, to increase diversity. What is the what?
• 32:38
  Tim Montague: Yeah, what are your thoughts about this? And what is your office involved in that that is going to make a difference for this.
• 32:45
  Becca Jones: For diversity?
• 32:45
  Becca Jones: Yeah, bringing a focus to diversity is a big priority for doe. And we want to ensure that those who have historically been disadvantaged are receiving the benefits of the energy transition and job benefits are some of the most important. So we're thinking very much about how we can prepare a diverse workforce and do outreach to be included, inclusive, and targeting underserved communities with that training.
• 33:11
  Becca Jones: We recently announced the advancing equity through workforce Partnerships Program, which is a little over a 12 $13 million effort that is specifically designed to develop partnerships to train a diverse workforce. The primary focus there is on solar installers, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has identified as one of the top three fastest growing jobs over the next decade. And we know there could be hundreds of 1000s of jobs as we increase solar deployment. And so we want to train that workforce, we want to connect them to jobs, and we want to create career pathways so that folks who enter these jobs have ways that they can grow and continue to progress throughout their career. So that is a focus for us. You know, one example is the power 52 Foundation in Columbia, Maryland, that is taking some workforce training programs that they have developed, and specifically spreading them around the Baltimore area and working to connect those that they are training with jobs.
• 34:17
  Tim Montague: We had Shalaya Morissette on the show about a year ago. And I you know, I know that she interfaces with many elements within the government, but what a powerhouse and and, you know, I just it, I was very inspired that we are able to recruit such thoughtful passionate people to, to serve in government and facilitate the this other transition that we need to make, which is to make the Clean Energy Transition representative of our entire society. And it's, it's, I guess, I'm gratified that you hear these conversations much more frequently than you did five years ago, okay. Among media professionals, like myself, among solar professionals, among entrepreneurs, and certainly among government and nonprofit entities as well, so the full spectrum is concerned with this and focused on it, but we have our work cut out for us, I guess. If if, if you could give some advice to a young person, a young woman or a young person of color, what advice would that be to help them find traction in the clean economy?
• 35:47
  Becca Jones: Well, I would say that the clean economy is, is a growing economy. And it is going to be a source of a growing number of jobs. And so it is a great area to be thinking about and, and getting into. And I would share that we need all kinds of backgrounds and expertise. And so rather than you know, trying to follow one particular path, to think about your own strengths, and then look to the kinds of programs that we are standing up, a Department of Energy is supporting throughout the government as well as going on in the private sector to find training programs that are a good fit to your skills and interests and take advantage of the training and opportunities that the inflation Reduction Act is is helping support to get into the field and start to get that experience now is a great time through you Increasing numbers of opportunities that are being created by the inflation production act to be thinking about making the leap into the clean energy transition. And look, look for for mentors and folks who can support you on the way.
• 36:56
  Tim Montague: And I would say, you know, consider the trades don't just think about a college track career, college is a great way to, you know, become an engineer or finance professional, or a marketing professional, but that we need lots of, we need lots of tradespeople too. We need installers, we need laborers, we need electricians, we need a million electricians in the United States. So that's my advice. Well, Rebecca, what else would you like our listeners to know about your work in our last few minutes together?
• 37:31
  Becca Jones: Well, one of the things that I'm increasingly excited about that we just touched on that always is agriculture tax, which is the colocation of solar energy technology and agricultural land. And so Historically, it's been, you know, this either or, you know, should we convert this agricultural land to solar use, or should we keep it as agricultural land, and that has led to a number of land use conflicts and concerns around the country. And the body of work we've been supporting since about 2015, and are continuing to invest in is, is really looking at how we can co locate and and make it a yes, and we can have solar production. And we can have agricultural use, and that could be land that is just pollinator species beneath a solar array. And so it is supporting pollinators that can enhance agricultural production on adjacent land, it can be land that's co located with crops, and I'm really excited about the potential to share solar and grazing land. We have almost a third of land of this in this country that is grazing land.
• 38:40
  Becca Jones: And so we would need only about 1% of that, to meet all of the solar needs to decarbonize the entire electricity grid. And we know that animals like shade, they you know, it helps reduce water needs and you know, create shade environments while still maintaining the grass and vegetation that they need us food. And so I think there's a really nice synergy. And I'm really excited for the potential to do more colocation of solar production with with grazing land.
• 39:14
  Tim Montague: Well, I certainly echo those thoughts. We love agriculture tags here at the Clean Power Hour, we've had a couple of different guests, experts in that. And I want our listeners to know that there is a wonderful conference in Chicago. Next year, that will be the second convening of the solar farm Summit. So go to solarfarmssummit.com, it's July 8, eight, nine and 1020 24.
• 39:44
  Tim Montague: That's the 2024 dates. And that was extremely well received in 2023. South they're coming back and they're also doing a national tour. Daniel French is the founder and director of that organization. So check that out.
• 40:03
  Tim Montague: And then as gather American Solar grazing Association, an organization dedicated to helping graziers and solar asset owners find equal footing and, and that's a good thing. So with that, I want to say thank you so much to Beck, Albertus Jones for coming on the show, please check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. Tell your friends about the show, connect with me on LinkedIn, I love hearing from my listeners. And LinkedIn is the easiest way to do that. You can also connect with me on clean power hour.com And subscribe to our YouTube channel. All of our content is on YouTube as well.
• 40:44
  Tim Montague: How can our listeners find you Miss Jones? Well,
• 40:51
  Becca Jones: we have a great website for the solar energy technologies officer doe. And on that website, we have a newsletter, which is the best way to keep track of the large number of great funding opportunities, prize competitions and other things that come out of our office. So really encourage folks to sign up for that newsletter. If you just Google doe solar office, you'll find it and then you can stay in touch with all the great things going on.
• 41:20
  Tim Montague: And it's Dr.
• 41:20
  Tim Montague: Jones, not Miss Jones, I stand corrected. But I really appreciate you making time for us, Becca, it's wonderful to have you here. And if other if there are other professionals in the DoD that you think would make good guests or be interested in coming on the show. I certainly would appreciate those referrals
• 41:43
  Becca Jones: absolutely got a lot of great folks that can recommend. Well,
• 41:46
  Tim Montague: with that, I will say, let's grow solar and storage. I'm Tim Montague, thank you so much. Have a great day, everyone. Hey, listeners. 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. 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.
• 42:23
  Tim Montague: And it would mean so much to me.
• 42:29
  Tim Montague: 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.
• 43:01
  Tim Montague: We have chin power systems, the leading three phase string inverter manufacturer in North America. So check out CPS America. But we are very actively looking for additional support to make this show work.
• 43:20
  Tim Montague: And you see here our media kit.
• 43:20
  Tim Montague: With all the sponsor benefits and statistics about the show.
• 43:25
  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.
• 43:59
  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