Latest / Energy Empire / The Costco of Solar — Meet the Man Quietly Cutting the Cost of Clean Energy

Transcript

The Costco of Solar — Meet the Man Quietly Cutting the Cost of Clean Energy · Energy Empire

0:00
We are the only organization in the world we know of that can
0:02
give immediate pricing for every one of these unique activities.
0:06
So whether it's civil engineering, electrical
0:08
engineering, substation engineering, permit
0:11
applications, etcetera, we can fix those prices upfront for the
0:15
first time. You're taking all these things
0:17
that like someone else would have charged $100,000 for and
0:20
you're like, I just did the math.
0:23
You're like Costco, you're like, that cost me $1943.
0:27
I don't think I'll just charge a 5% markup on there and just
0:30
charge people. I'm like Daniel, you can charge
0:32
$20,000 for that. Hello, my name is Jigar Shah and
0:40
I'm a clean energy entrepreneur. And I'm Jamie Nolan, a Clean
0:43
Energy communications executive. And this is Energy Empire.
0:47
Hi Jigger, I haven't seen you in a couple of.
0:49
Weeks, I know. Welcome back.
0:50
How is your health? It's good for anyone who missed
0:54
the memo. I was so sad.
0:56
I missed the recording with Katherine Blunt.
0:58
I contracted salmonella food poisoning, which like you think
1:01
is an urban legend. They always tell you to like,
1:04
practice good food safety, but it's real.
1:06
I'm here to tell you that it's very real.
1:08
And it was extremely unpleasant. So Oh my God, but I'm back.
1:11
I'm 100% thanks for covering for me while I was out and I'm
1:16
excited to talk to Daniel Deuce. Yeah, this morning I had to go
1:20
to my son's school. They all had to pick an
1:24
important topic that they wanted to do a presentation on.
1:27
And of course, my son picked clean energy and why it's so
1:31
important to get off of fossil fuels.
1:33
And so like, I'm like crying, you know, over at the episode,
1:38
he created a pop up book of like all these like wind power and
1:42
tidal power and solar panels that like popped up.
1:46
And he even had like a detailed presentation on how a solar cell
1:49
worked. That's awesome.
1:51
I mean no surprise, but we may need Dylan to make a little
1:54
cameo and do a do a show and tell for the audience.
1:58
That sounds so cool. Well, Daniel is amazing.
2:01
I have known Daniel for years, Full disclosure.
2:05
Funny enough, like one of the other people I work with closely
2:08
is a guy named Richard Dover. And Daniel and Richard don't
2:11
like each other because they they had like a lawsuit with
2:14
each other like many years ago when Daniel wasn't a previous
2:18
job and Richard was her previous job.
2:21
I don't know whether they buried the hatchet, but I like both.
2:23
Daniel. Appreciate you airing their
2:25
dirty Laundry jigger on our podcast.
2:27
Go ahead. I mean, that's how we do.
2:29
But I like Daniel and I like Richard, so it's good.
2:32
But I think but Daniel is like a class act and he we all know
2:38
that he gives up himself all the time, right?
2:41
He does the big solar Fight Night thing.
2:43
So I'm really excited to get into all of the things that he
2:47
does, why he does them. I think I'm I'm here to like
2:51
yell at him for like underpricing his services, which
2:54
I think he does. I think he provides so much
2:57
value he should charge for, but we'll see how he responds.
3:00
I do love that refrain that you constantly have.
3:03
And I would say his company, Cleantech Industry Resources,
3:07
it's one of those companies that when you get the pitch, you're
3:10
like, why are you not like huge? Why are you not like famous?
3:14
Why are you not rich? Like, it's just one of those
3:16
concepts that makes so much sense.
3:19
So I'm really excited to share that with our audience.
3:22
Yeah. I have no doubt in my mind that
3:23
one day he will be rich. But I think that, you know, what
3:27
he's doing right now is unlocking real value for solar
3:31
projects. As many people know, solar has
3:33
gotten a little bit more expensive actually to install
3:36
the last two or three years. And I think his product is
3:39
getting us back on track to reducing the cost of delivering
3:42
solar to customers. Absolutely.
3:44
And it all ties back to energy affordability, and this is just
3:47
like another company that is doing groundbreaking work and
3:50
driving down the cost of power. So I'm excited to talk to him.
3:53
Let's get into it. Energy Empire is powered by
4:01
Octopus Energy. Natasha Utilities have been
4:04
pitching demand response for 20 years.
4:07
Nobody signed up. Whose fault is that?
4:10
The industries. Those programs were designed for
4:13
utilities, not people. Confusing opt in's a bill
4:17
credit. You need a forensic accountant
4:19
to find no feedback ever. That's not a product, that's
4:22
homework. The utility answer is that
4:25
customers just don't care about the grid.
4:27
And they're right, and that's fine.
4:29
Nobody cares about the grid. People care about what they pay.
4:33
So stop asking them to care and build something that works on
4:36
its own. The car charges when Power's
4:38
cheapest thermostat precools before the evening peak.
4:41
The home battery cells back at the top and the savings show up
4:44
where you can actually see them. So the fix isn't another pilot
4:48
program. It's a product good enough that
4:51
nobody has to be convinced. Homework gets assigned, products
4:54
get chosen. Thanks Natasha Crow, vice
4:57
president of Marketing and Comms, North America, at Octopus
5:00
Energy. Link in the show notes Daniel
5:08
Deuce in the Flesh Jigger. It's great to see you.
5:13
Fantastic. Yeah, very good.
5:14
It's thawed up here in Vermont. So excited about that.
5:18
What do you guys get like 60 days of great weather a year?
5:21
Max Max. Oh no, probably less.
5:25
Not the best solar radiation, unfortunately.
5:28
But everyone loves to come up and stay with you, I'm sure
5:30
during the like leaf. Peeping season, yeah, we have
5:33
fall and we do have Smugglers Notch, so we've got some
5:36
treasures, but they're kind of few and far between sometimes.
5:40
You get icy skiing up at Killington.
5:42
Not this season. This season we got real powder.
5:45
But that was weird, to be clear. Yeah, that was very.
5:49
Great. You think it's bad skiing up
5:51
there, You should try hanging out with us in like Pennsylvania
5:54
or Virginia. It's a great way to break
5:56
something. Yeah, I've got a place up in
5:58
Deep Creek Lake and we have a ski resort called Wisp, which I
6:02
don't know that I can technically be called a ski
6:04
resort, but Daniel, we're going to jump right in because you
6:07
have an incredible story and I would like to get into it.
6:11
So like, just to start, you're the 4th generation of your
6:16
family to work in energy, right? Your great grandfather was a
6:20
coal mine engineer who became president of Michigan Tech
6:24
University. Your grandfather built power
6:28
Transformers at General Electric.
6:30
Like 3 generations of building the system and you're the one
6:34
that pivoted it into renewables, right?
6:36
It ended up the second person in the US to reach a GW of solar PP
6:41
as after me, obviously. And so like, what did watching
6:46
your family work the energy industry teach you that carried
6:50
you into Cir. Yes, yes.
6:53
You know, I usually don't tell all of my renewable energy
6:56
friends about my coal like family legacy, but thanks for
7:01
doing that trigger. I appreciate it.
7:02
You're like an energy neppo, baby Danielle is what?
7:06
You're telling us, evidently, I remember when my peers in middle
7:11
school were going to, as they should have baseball camp and
7:16
soccer camp. I went to Michigan Tech
7:20
mechanical engineering camp. So you can imagine that was a
7:23
fun party. But and then going into the
7:25
125,000 square foot library, which is named after my great
7:30
grandfather, and seeing it filled with energy knowledge,
7:33
right, Energy industry knowledge, it's definitely set
7:37
the stage. And seeing the transformer
7:38
building 2,000,000 square feet that my grandfather built power
7:42
Transformers in, it certainly gave me the feeling that humans
7:47
can do really big things right, and I just wanted to be part of
7:50
it. Well, you know I protested the
7:53
Michigan Tech coal lant so. Did you really?
7:57
Oh, yeah, I went to Illinois, right.
7:59
But all of us had a coal plant that like was joining the
8:03
university that then, you know, was like a Cogen facility,
8:07
right? So you would take the heat off
8:08
the coal plant and heat and cool all the buildings and.
8:11
Yeah, coal kept the lights on for a long time.
8:14
We no longer need it. If great grandpa was around
8:17
today, he would certainly be a solar engineer, I have no doubt
8:20
about that. I love that.
8:21
And so give me the origin story of Cir. right?
8:25
Because you used to run Adani's solar business in the US And
8:29
like, I mean, there's a little bit of an origin story between
8:32
the two, right? Yes, absolutely.
8:34
Working within Adani was pretty amazing.
8:37
This is an organization that signed the world's largest PPA
8:40
at the time of eight gigawatts, commissioned the world's largest
8:43
wind solar hybrid park of 1.6 gigawatts.
8:46
Earlier this week, they just announced they've commissioned
8:48
the largest battery outside of China, 3.4 GW hours.
8:52
So that's the scale of the projects and the complexity of
8:55
the projects that's happening there. 10X the United States and
8:59
that my team has worked on. And so we acquired Adani's U.S.
9:03
business, the intellectual property there and spun it out
9:05
into what is now Cir. So direct outcome from what I
9:10
had ranked before we left as the world's largest global solar
9:12
developer. So quite a spin out story.
9:15
And remind me what Cir. stands for?
9:18
Clean tech industry resources. The.
9:21
Most generic possible name because we don't care about our
9:24
brand, we care about serving the industry.
9:26
So not super important that we have a memorable brand, I guess.
9:30
We're going to fix that. Yeah, I'm like we brands always
9:33
there, always, always available to you, Daniel.
9:36
OK, So you you describe Cir. as the world's only Amazon style
9:41
service store for complex energy professional services to include
9:45
site visits, diligence, energy modeling, permitting, grid
9:48
studies, merger and acquisition support, construction
9:52
management, etcetera, etcetera, all at fixed global pricing.
9:56
So for a listener who's never thought about energy project
9:59
development as a storefront, explain what you actually built.
10:03
Like what does a customer literally do when they show up?
10:08
My inability to answer that question in a simple clean way
10:13
is actually one of the cores to the value we've created because
10:17
it's really a choose your own adventure story, right?
10:19
We have clients that can come and purchase a single energy
10:22
generation model or they can retain us to deliver a GW scale
10:27
battery to NTP immediately, right?
10:31
With 0 lag, no bid time, etcetera, just straight into
10:34
execution. And so it varies by client and
10:38
their individual needs, their internal bandwidth, external
10:41
bandwidth, where their bottlenecks are in that moment,
10:44
we can apply bandwidth to support them and accelerate in
10:49
exactly that that location. In that way it's.
10:51
Almost like they're like separate modules and so you can
10:54
like go little or you can go big like depending on your needs.
10:58
Any system size? Yeah, any system size globally.
11:02
But let me get into my pet peeve because I I think your
11:05
storytelling is terrible, Daniel.
11:07
So like so like I'm reading story worthy right now.
11:11
Let me get right into this because like the thing that I
11:14
find fascinating about what you do, is it so #1 the reason you
11:19
have this business, as I can tell, is that Adani is basically
11:23
obsessed with doing everything in house.
11:25
So as a result, like you are not allowed to hire any external
11:29
consultants. And so you had to do everything
11:31
in house from geotechnical reports to, you know,
11:34
interconnection studies to all this other stuff.
11:36
And so as a result, you inherited a team of like 100
11:41
people in India who were experts in esoteric reports or whatever
11:47
for US projects, right? And so that's why you have all
11:50
of the people that you have, right, because they sort of were
11:54
forced to become experts in like each individual thing in the US,
11:58
right? And that's really what you're
11:59
renting out. And then the next stage, as I
12:03
understand it was all these companies came through
12:06
powerhouse, right, and other like incubators and they all
12:09
basically created their own little app that like made
12:13
they're part of solar more efficient.
12:15
Nobody obviously wanted to have 74 apps, but you decided to
12:19
license all 74 apps, right? And like figure out how to
12:23
become an expert at all of them and like help people do things
12:26
more efficiently, right? Today you've realized that half
12:29
of them are garbage. And so like you only have like
12:31
37 apps, right? But you started with all of them
12:34
just to see whether you can figure it out, right?
12:37
And now you're sort of at a point where you can do
12:42
everything for everybody. But in some ways, when you say
12:46
that you can do everything for everybody, it's even more
12:48
confusing, right? Because in some ways you kind of
12:51
need to say we have the like deluxe car wash, the simple car
12:57
wash, the car wash with waxing, the car wash with like, you
13:01
know, the interior, like, you know, detailing, etcetera.
13:04
Like I feel like you need false packages even though you have
13:08
the ability to do all of it. Yeah.
13:11
And we do in our latest pricing calculators, we do have a fixed
13:15
price to NTP, any solar or battery project globally.
13:19
So that's literally full performance of the development
13:21
work. But we also do any slice of that
13:25
entire process for unique clients and we don't really care
13:29
which it is. Some clients we build 2 or $300
13:33
a month to. Some clients we build $150,000 a
13:35
month to task come in one side of the organization and work
13:39
product and execution happens. So our execution framework is
13:44
the same for all of those clients regardless of scale and
13:47
scope. But I agree, yeah, it's very,
13:49
very hard to tell that story. It's extremely hard.
13:53
Well, Jigger just told it for you so.
13:55
All you need to. Do Daniel is just take the
13:57
transcript from this conversation and turn that into
14:00
your like everyone loves an exciting origin story.
14:03
Like you can count on Jigger to be like this is like I get in
14:06
trouble with my husband for doing this.
14:08
He'll tell a story and I'll be like listening and I'll be like,
14:10
well, what really happened is and then I'll retell the story.
14:13
I have gotten scolded so much about that, but I try not to do
14:16
that now. But that's that's basically what
14:18
Jigger did. But I mean, you're a CEO, so
14:21
that's going to help you perceived less positively by my
14:24
husband, I think, but. Well, you know, like that's what
14:28
Jamie and I do. We jazz it up.
14:31
Yes, it's true, but that's what we're here for.
14:33
So now you've gone out in the world and you've have pitched
14:36
the top 100 solar developers, right?
14:40
And NTP for those folks who are following along is notice to
14:43
proceed. So that's all of the steps
14:45
required to start construction basically, right?
14:48
And, and you've gone to all of those people and you've captured
14:53
I think what 20 of the top 100 are now. 25% plus, yeah.
14:59
That's pretty amazing. And most of that, I think has
15:01
been accomplished in the last 12 months.
15:04
It is, yes. We now have over 250 clients, so
15:07
I'd say more than 50% of those in the last 12 months, they were
15:11
adding a new client every other day.
15:13
We have a single United States sales representative,
15:16
essentially. That's wild.
15:18
So yeah, yeah, we cannot on board folks any faster than we
15:23
are. Essentially we're we're being
15:25
governed by our bolting on bandwidth just to do more of
15:29
what we're already doing. But it's a strange time to be in
15:33
such a good place. But I guess we'll just knock on
15:36
wood and call it a day. So you've said that Cir. has
15:40
commoditized roughly 95% of the activities it takes to advance
15:44
an energy project. For someone in the industry
15:47
hearing that number for the first time, what is commoditized
15:50
actually mean in practice? Like what is the work now that
15:54
wasn't standardized before? Almost none of it, Jamie.
15:58
We are the only organization in the world we know of that can
16:01
give immediate pricing for every one of these unique activities.
16:05
So whether it's civil engineering, electrical
16:07
engineering, substation engineering, whether it's permit
16:10
applications, etcetera, we can fix those prices upfront for the
16:15
first time. And so 95% of these activities
16:19
to get projects to construction and finance readiness are
16:23
commoditized in our process. The 5% that are not there are
16:28
the boots on the site, portions of the site studies, the
16:32
majority of environmental assessments, wetland
16:34
delineations, these things are actually desktop and we've
16:37
commoditized all of those. But the site specific screening,
16:40
we will scope them, RFP them, we'll collect a dozen bids and
16:46
provide them at cost to our clients, but they're not yet
16:48
commoditized. You're taking all these things
16:50
that like someone else would have charged $100,000 for and
16:53
you're like, I just did the math.
16:56
It's like you're like Costco, you're like, that cost me $1943.
17:02
I don't think I'll just charge a 5% markup on there and just
17:04
charge people. I'm like, Daniel, you can charge
17:06
$20,000 for that. They're like, no, I think I'm
17:09
just going to take the cost to like mark it up 5%, like charge
17:12
my client that. You know me well, and you know
17:14
that if I could give our services away for free to
17:17
advance clean energy projects, I would.
17:19
Yes, you are. I love that.
17:21
I love that, Daniel, as someone who jigger, jigger who likes to
17:25
tell me that I'm too generous and I want to pay people too
17:28
much and I I can't help it. You can't turn it off.
17:31
It is the mission that often comes first.
17:33
So Daniel, can you give us a concrete example here of like a
17:36
price comparison of what a project may cost working through
17:39
Cir. versus like the standard process?
17:42
Sure. Of course.
17:43
I like to use the DOE has APV system cost analysis.
17:47
I think the last one was refreshed in 2024.
17:50
And if you look at that soft costs are about 17 to $0.19 per
17:57
Watt for 100 MW DC project. Our cost to NTP 100 MW DC
18:04
project is 1.52 cents. That includes full systems
18:08
engineering. Most folks can't even get just
18:11
the engineering done for that number.
18:14
So that's the magnitude of the advantage.
18:17
All right. So we were talking about how you
18:19
were able to commoditize 95% of this process.
18:22
So what is it that's in the 5% that you cannot commoditize?
18:26
And what does that 5% that's remaining tell us about where
18:31
the industry still needs human judgment?
18:34
Yeah. What's interesting is we
18:35
actually have commoditized the human in the loop portion of all
18:40
of our work flows. So they're heavily software
18:43
dependent, but they also have subject matter experts in every
18:46
workflow controlling the quality and advancing those in real
18:50
time. So where we need the human in
18:53
the loop falls into a few categories. 1 is I would just
18:58
call it generally EQ or emotional quotient.
19:02
People convincing other people to do things right.
19:05
Bob the Fire Marshall is going to have personal opinions that
19:09
have nothing to do with the code every time.
19:13
And you have to be ready to either educate Bob or agree with
19:17
Bob and update and refresh your engineering, technical work,
19:21
procurement, etcetera, or come up with some type of a
19:24
settlement and negotiate with Bob for for a settled
19:27
negotiation. And by the way, Bob is not going
19:29
to answer his telephone. He's only going to respond if
19:33
you show up in person with a large box of Donuts.
19:36
And so that is. Extremely important Daniel fruit
19:39
basket. Much healthier.
19:41
Much healthier. So you're saying, you're saying
19:43
stakeholder engagement, community engagement,
19:46
essentially communications and marketing functions where you
19:48
have to actually build trust with people cannot be replaced
19:51
with replacement? And and also the other major
19:54
bucket is simply liability. We're in constant touch with
19:58
professional licensing boards and if you ask them licensed
20:02
civil, structural, electrical, financial advisory, legal bars,
20:07
etcetera, if you ask them if they are prepared to give any
20:11
AIA license, they will laugh at you, right?
20:14
And that is not about to change anytime soon.
20:17
These are human boards. So therefore you must have the
20:21
human in the loop to take full liability for any and all
20:24
decisions and actions, and we don't see that changing.
20:27
So that's where we spend a lot of our time and focus.
20:30
So the other thing I was thinking about is you started
20:33
off the company with like a license to all these different
20:36
apps from all these companies around the country who are
20:40
trying to, you know, like make each one of these component
20:43
parts more efficient. But now we have AI, right?
20:46
And so you publicly announced that you're going to try to have
20:49
1750 AI agents in place by the end of this year.
20:54
You have a Google AI lead that like you've been working with
20:57
for the past 2 1/2 years to guide you around what was
21:00
possible, right? So help us understand the apps
21:06
that you were using before and then the agents you're putting
21:09
in now, whether any of them interact with each other.
21:12
Are they replacing the apps? Do they do some other function
21:16
like like how does AI you know really help make this all
21:20
happen? Yeah, it's, it's a great
21:21
question. And we still have over 52
21:24
different enterprise level third party tools that are fantastic.
21:27
Of course we have PV case and PV roof and DNVGL solar compass,
21:31
Homer Grid, Zen D and on and on and on, right.
21:34
And then we have expert operators in each of those
21:37
tools. Where we have our AI agents
21:39
working is on the automation and acceleration and improvement of
21:44
of the human workflows that advance any one of these unique
21:48
disciplines. And so for example, the AI data
21:52
room diligence process that we acquired from Richard Matsui, we
21:56
now have over 25 different highly trained specialized AI
22:00
agents executing that process to identify risk in various data
22:04
rooms and compile key information and make it
22:07
actionable. And so, but you're certainly
22:10
right in that we've gone from sort of passive software tools
22:15
now to tools that can act on our behalves.
22:19
And so that's really where we're spending a ton of time, of
22:22
course. And for us, these work
22:23
everywhere from generating meeting minutes immediately
22:27
following a call to initial pricing and cost estimation for
22:31
projects, all of which go through a highly expert subject
22:35
matter, but reducing the time that it takes them to prepare
22:39
and assess and analyze these things.
22:42
There is not a single workflow in the organization that's not
22:44
touched by AI automation and Software Zero.
22:48
I saw Jamie just perk up there. Are you replacing her Fireflies
22:52
meeting notes? You know app here.
22:54
We also use fireflies. We like fireflies a lot.
22:59
I, I just got, I just got, I had AI did have a client refer me to
23:02
another tool yesterday. So we'll have to, I'll have to
23:04
try that out. Also love the shout out to
23:07
Richard Matsui, who I have to point out was our colleague at
23:10
the loan programs office. So hi, Rich, if you hear this.
23:14
OK, Daniel. So here's the question you owe
23:17
us an honor, an honest answer to you kind of already suggested as
23:21
such, but you've said that the commoditization of knowledge
23:24
work isn't a future threat. It's already happened.
23:27
And I think that you're kind of explaining that as you're
23:29
talking about the the structure of your company and how it
23:31
works. But for the energy engineers and
23:33
developers listening right now, what you've built is essentially
23:36
A eulogy for the way their jobs used to work, like how things
23:40
were done. So what is your honest case to
23:43
that workforce? What should they be doing with
23:46
the next 10 years of their careers?
23:49
It is the number one pushback that we get from teams that we
23:53
want to or are working with on occasion.
23:56
They see our process, our process, our workflows and they
24:00
think they're just going to get fired tomorrow, right?
24:03
We had one engineer tell us some time back that he was not even
24:08
going to present our quote to his management because he said,
24:14
quote, I would look like an idiot for all the money I've
24:17
been spending on the scope for the rest of the portfolio.
24:21
And so of course, that's the wrong response.
24:24
And the right response is that this is absolutely a Jevons
24:28
paradox moment for renewable energy.
24:31
If you can reduce as we can the cost of delivered assets by 20
24:34
to 30%, then we only increase the demand for solar across
24:41
homes, businesses and at utilities.
24:44
And so there is no shortage of work to be done and employment
24:48
to be had in that dramatic growth scenario.
24:51
If we all tighten the belt, get more efficient faster and we
24:54
continue to widen the gap of what the cost and price of our
24:58
energy in the market versus alternatives, right.
25:01
So that is our entire thinking. And by the way, if anyone would
25:05
like to talk about working for us, please call me.
25:08
Well, and that's what I keep telling people too, who asked me
25:10
this is I'm just like, you know, these are all of the tasks that
25:14
nobody wanted to do. Like it was painstaking work.
25:18
You had to figure out where the mistake was.
25:20
It was like a where's Waldo you know, effort because you had
25:23
this like complicated drawing. You're like, are we sure that
25:26
it's correct? And what part is not correct or
25:28
whatever? Now you have an AI agent that
25:30
can tell you exactly whether it's correct or not and like,
25:33
and then highlight the parts that you should just look at
25:35
more carefully. I totally agree with you.
25:37
I feel like this is going to allow us to 10X the amount of
25:41
solar that we deploy, which is what we need to do in this
25:44
moment. The one question I had though on
25:46
this is really just how do we restate what I just said to
25:52
humans, right? Like what part of their job as
25:57
AI and what part of their job is them and how do they feel like
26:02
that part of what they have to do continues to be important.
26:07
Their judgment continues to be important, right?
26:09
That like the AI is there to assist them, right?
26:12
I mean, because you know, Jensen Huang talks about this all the
26:15
time, right? That like that when Microsoft
26:18
Excel came out, it wasn't like everybody who did spreadsheets
26:21
manually, like lost their job. Like in fact, 10s of thousands
26:24
of additional people got hired to do more spreadsheets, right?
26:26
And so like, so I feel like everyone thinks that AI is
26:30
coming for their job instead of thinking that AI is going to be
26:33
a tool that helps them do their job more effectively.
26:36
What I think is important for us all to remember is that we have
26:40
all been subject to way too much data and plenty of great advice
26:46
for a really long time. It was all just one Google
26:48
search away. Subject matter experts have been
26:51
dumping it online for years and years.
26:55
So yes, AI now gives us a million times more data and
26:59
analysis and great advice. It still has to be actuated in
27:03
the physical world. It still has to be turned into
27:05
action. And so that's where we lack the,
27:10
I think fear that exists often in the market.
27:13
What our AI advisors point out to us is that AI is going to and
27:18
and has already started inventing amazing new medical
27:22
devices, technologies, etcetera. Those require factories to be
27:27
built, they require sales teams to be sold, they require human
27:30
relationships to be deployed. They require electricians in the
27:32
field, right. And so the number of new
27:37
technologies and advancements that we're looking at, including
27:40
in our field is going to be substantial and require humans
27:43
to execute bottom line. Daniel, you're one of the six
27:47
founders of the Solar Fight Club, which has grown Solar
27:51
Fight Night into one of the largest renewable energy
27:54
fundraisers in the world. 22 events, more than 14,000
27:58
attendees, over 1.8 million raised to date for clean energy
28:02
nonprofits. I know it's the party of the
28:05
year for the renewable energy industry every year at RA Plus.
28:09
I never miss it. Jigger and I have gone been
28:11
going together for years now. For listeners who have never
28:13
been to one, what actually happens at a solar Fight Night
28:16
and why does this scene exist in clean tech?
28:20
Well, what actually happens at Fight Night, I guess.
28:25
In Vegas last year I had a sway pool performer representing
28:29
wind. I had synchronized swimmers
28:31
representing hydrogen. I had a guy running around in a
28:34
tinfoil hat with a Pinocchio nose talking about how windmills
28:38
kill whales. And I had a Joker running around
28:41
giving people tariffs for absolutely no reason.
28:44
Like your shirts too red. I didn't that's.
28:48
Hilarious. Though, Yeah, so we have fun
28:50
with what's happening in the moment because sometimes if you
28:53
don't laugh, you cry. But at its core, Fight Night has
28:57
the exact same mission it's always had, which is to
29:00
celebrate the industry and the people that are making this
29:03
transition happen, that are fighting for a cleaner future
29:07
and to make the human connections that get projects
29:10
done right. That mission remains to this
29:13
day. It's the best networking event
29:16
in the industry, in my opinion. And that is Fight Night in a
29:19
nutshell. All right, take me to the bar.
29:23
How did the six of you get together and what was it like
29:26
when you came up with the idea? So the original idea was from
29:31
Todd Friedman, now development at Altis, and it was about
29:37
survival back then, right in 2008, it was about how to not go
29:45
bankrupt or leave the industry. My first two years in solar, I
29:48
made exactly $0.00. And so that's what we were
29:52
talking about. How are we going to get the
29:54
first projects that we were getting signed?
29:56
How are we going to get them done?
29:58
I'll never forget I showed up and I was talking about how I'd
30:00
signed 100 kilowatt PPA with the city of Santa Monica and
30:04
everyone was like 100 kilowatts. Like, how are you ever going to
30:07
do that, right? It's massive.
30:09
And so that that's, that was really the genesis.
30:12
And of course, we all know that we have more passion in this
30:16
industry than others. I think Jamie, you were alluding
30:20
to why is such an event exist in the clean tech space versus
30:25
maybe some others. So for fun, if you Google
30:29
nonprofit fundraising event for oil and gas nonprofits, you will
30:33
come up with exactly 0. And so it's, it's not as if
30:38
there is much competition. And I think it really comes down
30:42
to the core heart and soul of our industry being more than
30:46
just an economic initiative, but a moral and imperative as well.
30:50
So I think that's why, Solar Fight Night insists.
30:53
Can you give a quick shout out to 1 of what group you've?
30:57
I know every year you support a different nonprofit
30:59
organization, but either the group you're supporting this
31:02
year or one that stands out to you from the last few years.
31:05
This year we are promoting our leading industry advocates
31:09
because as Jigger likes to point out, political power is our
31:13
first, second and third priority.
31:14
And so we are supporting solar Energy Industries Association,
31:18
SIA. We're supporting both solar
31:20
who's the leader at the state level.
31:22
Of course, SIA is the leader at the national level and we're
31:24
supporting run on Climate, which is a leader at getting mayoral
31:28
and county government candidates elected who are pro climate.
31:31
And that's where we see a lot of projects dying these days,
31:34
locally, hyper locally. So huge fan of their work
31:38
especially. So now let's turn this back to
31:41
capitalism. And so so Cir. actually gets a
31:46
lot out of solar Fight Night. So like I'm not suggesting you
31:50
started it for this purpose, but now that you have like a party
31:54
that everybody wants to get into that gets sold out, you have
31:57
AVIP line and also stuff like how do you guys use this
32:02
strategically to get more customers to notice Cir. and in
32:07
the door and all that stuff? It's a great question.
32:10
Actually. No one has ever asked me this
32:12
question before so, but people have asked me why do you have
32:16
you spent 1000 hours arranging or and coordinating and
32:20
executing solar Fight Night over the years for $0.00, right?
32:24
That's a that's a perfectly reasonable question and there's
32:29
certainly an element of it just gives me hope in humanity.
32:32
Again, we go through the year, we read all these terrible
32:34
headlines about all these stupid things we're doing as a species.
32:38
But you go to Fight Night and you remember that there are so
32:41
many good people doing such good work and that is more valuable
32:46
than the almighty dollar sometimes.
32:48
Now going back to Capitalism Jigger, it is a secret sauce
32:53
item for Cir. Although I've never taken the
32:56
mic and spoken about Cir. who runs and manages and execute the
33:01
the event or myself. For one concrete example of the
33:06
outcomes here, we have everyone's contact information.
33:09
We have 63,000 contacts for every vendor on planet Earth,
33:14
globally. And so when we support our
33:16
clients in executing procurement activities, on average our
33:19
clients internal teams might go to three to five bidders.
33:22
On average, we go to 150 bidder organizations and we have
33:27
everyone's personal Gmail addresses because of Fight
33:29
Night. Thank you.
33:30
And so we're able to get to them and make sure that they're
33:32
responding to opportunities that fits with their scope.
33:36
So on average, we're able to drive procurement cost down by 3
33:39
to 5% even at the 100 or MW or GW scale project.
33:45
That's a lot of cash and value to our clients, and probably a
33:48
full third of our clients have come from being in touch with
33:52
folks just outside of the commercial relationship focus,
33:55
right? It just gives us something to
33:57
connect with. There are too few opportunities
33:59
for us to connect as humans these days outside of a
34:01
commercial environment, right? Everything is an ad and Solar
34:05
Fight Night is the opposite of that.
34:06
I invite every one of our competitors into to the event to
34:10
celebrate the industry because it's about all of us.
34:13
Awesome. I love that so much.
34:15
So you've also launched Cleantech Fact Check through
34:18
Solar Fight Night, which is a platform built specifically to
34:20
push back on misinformation and clean energy.
34:23
You've said critical decisions in this industry are getting
34:26
made on incomplete or misleading information, which I think we
34:29
can all agree with. So what's the piece of
34:32
misinformation that Cleantech Fact Check is built to take down
34:35
right now? And who's the audience that
34:37
you're trying to reach with that beyond just our colleagues in
34:40
the industry? Yeah.
34:41
Well, first of all, I'm trying to stop calling it
34:44
misinformation and just call it lies.
34:47
They're lies. This is really the truth of the
34:49
matter. And it's it's ironically one of
34:53
the great disadvantages of our industry is that our executive
34:57
teams are moral and would never lie.
35:00
I do not know a single renewable energy industry executive who
35:04
would get on and lie, for example, like the coal lobby
35:07
saying that pollution is good for us, for example.
35:11
Now we've database dozens and dozens of these lies and then
35:14
prepared well researched scientific responses as well as
35:18
comedic responses if that's what you want to respond with.
35:22
We've also databased all the industry videos of every farmer
35:26
whose farm the industry saved, every homeowner who's put panels
35:30
on their roof and wants to brag about their $0.00 energy bill so
35:35
that folks can access those videos and respond wherever they
35:38
are. We've databased where those
35:40
folks are and those stories come from.
35:42
So there's a repository of of responses to the lies and
35:46
misinformation in real time. So because it can take a long
35:49
time to research and respond and reply.
35:52
So instead you can go to cleantechfactcheck.org,
35:55
immediately search, find the lie, cut and paste response of
35:58
your choosing because we just have to be in the mix on the
36:02
discussion. That's an awesome resource that
36:05
I have. I am embarrassed to admit that I
36:07
didn't know that it existed, but I'm gonna go check it out right
36:09
after this. Brand new, brand new.
36:11
We launched two or three weeks ago, so.
36:13
Oh, awesome. Great.
36:14
All right. We'll definitely have to put
36:16
that in the show notes as well as a link to where folks can go
36:19
to potentially become a customer of Cir.
36:22
Because I mean, I think if they, if you listen to this episode,
36:25
if you're in the market for any of these services, the value
36:29
prop here is just completely undeniable.
36:31
Last question on my side, Ari Plus got pushed out to November
36:36
this year in Vegas. I think it's the same week as
36:42
the F1 race. So that's going to be crazy.
36:46
And so like, where is solar Fight Night?
36:49
Is the F1 race also in Vegas? It is, and it's that Thursday of
36:53
that week, and so I'm out on Wednesday this year.
36:57
We better all go make our hotel reservations now.
37:00
Yeah, exactly. Immediately I, I did notice that
37:04
our suite booking was 50% more when we booked it last month.
37:08
And I thought it was just for the conference, but that makes
37:11
much more sense. I think the F1 set probably has
37:14
a little more cash to spend on on fancy hotel rooms that our
37:18
renewable energy industry friends do.
37:20
We are at the same venue, Soup Nightclub, IU Day Club.
37:24
I want to say it's a 3500 plus person venue, really nice,
37:29
super, super high tech and we're going to have a lot of fun.
37:32
And hopefully I'm going to knock on wood after the recording
37:35
here. Hopefully we'll be celebrating
37:37
the midterms, right? That's what that's what we hope.
37:40
High energy. We definitely want a lot of
37:42
clean energy champions to win their seat in midterms.
37:47
Has to happen. Well, we can't wait to see you
37:50
at Solar Fight Night, Daniel. We'll be there.
37:52
Yes, we're doing one at ACP 2-3 a year now.
37:55
Amazing. Well, thanks for coming on,
37:57
Daniel, and thanks for all the great work you've done for years
38:01
for our industry. It really is important.
38:03
And just a reminder, double your prices.
38:09
He does this to me too. It's just paradox, Jigger
38:12
Javid's paradox, right? Our, our conversion rate from a
38:16
cold call to a client is 60 plus percent for a reason, right?
38:21
So there's a there's some upside in being aggressive on our
38:25
pricing structures. I love it.
38:27
Thanks Daniel. Thanks.
38:33
Energy Empire is supported by S2G Investments.
38:37
If you haven't checked out their podcast, I highly recommend it.
38:41
They have a great recent episode on the long term effects of the
38:44
Iran war and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
38:47
In the episode, Sanjeev Krishna and Franco Sullivan and Bala
38:52
Nagarajan make a compelling case that this disruption could be
38:56
the most powerful accelerant for renewable energy in a
38:59
generation. And in future episodes, they'll
39:02
be exploring how those forces are reshaping our food systems
39:06
and ocean intelligence. Sound interesting?
39:08
Go find the S2G podcast and start with the global energy.
39:13
Order has changed Now what? Well, that was fun.
39:21
Yes, So great to talk to Daniel. He's really inspiring.
39:24
He's one of those people who is absolutely driving change in our
39:27
sector with an incredible company that is driving on the
39:31
cost of power and just making our, you know, these, these
39:36
services and this generation so much more scalable in a really
39:41
powerful way. So I can't wait to see what they
39:44
do next. But it is kind of hilarious that
39:46
he is not at all a self promoter.
39:48
He's not. I mean, it was funny to me when
39:50
you were kind of like, I'm going to retell that story for you.
39:53
I mean, I really hope that he takes that to heart because he
39:56
should toot his own horn a little bit and it doesn't come
39:59
naturally to some people. But then in other places, I
40:02
thought he was really eloquent, like he had a really great
40:05
response on like some of the workforce issues related to AI
40:08
adoption in the sector. And he really understands like
40:12
the human element of the work and how important the trust
40:14
building is. And just there's so much heart
40:17
in what he's doing, like with Solar Fight Night and all of his
40:20
nonprofit work. So it was great to get to know
40:22
him a little bit more. Oh, he clearly cares.
40:25
I mean, that's when he lights up.
40:26
Is he really cares when he's talking about others?
40:28
And he clearly like clams up when he wants, when I'd like ask
40:32
him to talk about himself. I'm like, no, I want you to talk
40:35
more about yourself. Yep, Yep.
40:38
He's obviously, like so many of us in the sector, really cares
40:41
about climate, is like here to to just do well by doing good.
40:46
Well, and I'm super excited to see how the tools that he's put
40:49
together really can reduce the cost of the soft costs on solar.
40:53
I mean, I was shocked by his numbers where he was like, it's
40:57
like 17 and $0.19 per Watt on the cost of installing a solar
41:02
project. All those soft costs and he's
41:03
reducing them down to, I think he said, 1.52 cents.
41:07
Yeah, wild. Like significantly greater cross
41:12
cost reductions than I anticipated he would be able to
41:15
tangibly demonstrate. I don't see any reason why
41:18
anyone who wasn't in the market for any of those services
41:22
wouldn't be reaching out to Cir. after listening to this episode.
41:26
Like the value is just absolutely undeniable.
41:29
Well, we're going to put a link, I'm sure in the show notes and
41:32
folks should click on it and make sure that they start saving
41:36
money. I mean, it's important.
41:37
Totally. And then also for my other comms
41:39
and marketing folks that I know you're listening to this
41:41
podcasts, definitely also go check out Cleantech Fact Check,
41:45
which is the new website that Daniel mentioned just launched a
41:49
few weeks ago. I am going to go check it out
41:52
and post on LinkedIn about it. Can't wait.
41:55
Well, and as you know, Next up, the Ass Jigger segment that is
41:58
sponsored by our friends at Octopus Energy.
42:01
I can't wait. I'm really excited.
42:07
Welcome to Ask Jigger, our weekly segment where Jigger
42:10
answers your questions about energy or anything else you're
42:13
wondering about. Huge thanks to our sponsor
42:15
Octopus Energy for making the segment possible.
42:18
Before we get into this week's questions, a bit of news.
42:21
We have a brand new merch shop, very excited about it.
42:25
Right now it's Energy Empire merch, but we have plans to add
42:28
more general energy merch, so definitely send us your ideas
42:32
for what you want to say. And to celebrate, anyone who
42:34
sends in a question that Jigger answers on the show gets an
42:37
Energy Empire hat. So send them in.
42:40
All right, let's get to it, Jigger.
42:42
Our first question comes from Darren Lehman.
42:45
And Darren says Jigger. I've spent a lot of time on
42:48
residential roofs, installing solar panels and all the
42:51
electrical work that makes the system run.
42:54
So here's what I can't figure out.
42:55
Data centers keep citing these massive new power needs.
42:58
So why is an on site solar and battery storage a routine part
43:02
of their plans? I get that rooftop and ground
43:05
mount solar plus batteries won't cover all of their load, but it
43:08
boggles my mind that the cheapest new generation we have
43:11
isn't standard in the build out. Why not?
43:14
It is such a good point, but basically it is the battery that
43:20
matters, not the solar, right? And So what happens when a data
43:24
center comes to town is that they use up a lot of the excess
43:27
capacity that's left in the grid.
43:29
And so if you can put everybody on that circuit on batteries and
43:34
that when there is like a grid crisis or some sort of
43:37
emergency, you actually take those loads and have them run
43:40
off the battery, that frees up capacity for the data center.
43:44
And what a lot of the experts are saying is that if you give
43:49
local residents free stuff, meaning a battery and then maybe
43:54
a solar system to refuel the battery, then they suddenly love
43:58
the data center. And it's less than .1% of the
44:02
cost of a new data center to provide all of those batteries
44:06
to those residential customers. And so I totally agree with you
44:11
that residential solar and battery storage should be part
44:13
of the solution. One other fun fact, we have
44:17
about 6,000,000 residential solar systems in the United
44:23
States. That represents maybe 10%, a
44:26
little less of all of the single family residential systems
44:30
houses in the country. I think Australia is over 40%,
44:34
maybe 50% of their rooftops with solar on it.
44:37
So if we just matched Australia, we would free up so much
44:41
capacity that we could say yes to all of the data centers and
44:45
reduce everybody's bills by 10%. Well, those are some big
44:49
numbers. I mean, I think we understand
44:51
what the solution is, but why are the hyperscalers not hip to
44:55
this? Like why aren't they doing it?
44:58
Because the people who understand the grid are not the
45:00
people who are trying to move fast and break things.
45:03
And so, like, part of this is actually forcing the people who
45:06
move fast and break things to understand that their way isn't
45:09
working right. I mean, like 70% of all the data
45:12
centers that were supposed to be online this year are delayed.
45:16
They're not even under construction yet.
45:18
And so their way is not going fast.
45:21
They have to move a little more slowly to go fast later.
45:24
And a lot of the energy experts who work for the hyperscalers
45:27
know what the right answer is. But people aren't listening to
45:30
them. So keep beating up the
45:32
hyperscalers. They'll do the right thing
45:33
eventually. All right, I'll take our next
45:37
question comes from David Savage.
45:39
And David, says Jigger. I'm a staffer at a Public
45:41
Utilities Commission. I'm so happy you're here, David,
45:44
Thank you for listening to the podcast.
45:46
You've talked a lot about the need for commissions to be more
45:49
proactive. And I wonder where you think the
45:51
balance lies between a Commission taking action on its
45:54
own versus needing to be empowered to act by the state
45:58
legislature. It's a great question and one
46:01
that we struggle with all the time.
46:02
You know, I think that commissions do, I think have the
46:06
right to say and to nudge utilities in the right direction
46:10
and say, hey, it'd be good to get more out of the grid.
46:13
We've already paid for using grid enhancing technologies and
46:15
virtual power plants. But for a lot of utility
46:19
commissions, they view themselves as traditional
46:22
bodies, right? And so the utility goes forward
46:24
and says here's our integrated resource plan or here's our rate
46:27
recovery request. And folks have to go through and
46:31
say here's what's prudent, here's what's not prudent.
46:33
They're not really supposed to tell utility companies how to
46:36
operate their grid. So they want air cover from the
46:40
state legislators to say, hey, you have to achieved this higher
46:45
grade utilization which is what passed in Virginia.
46:48
There's other states that are looking to do the same thing to
46:50
give their commissions air cover.
46:52
But I would suggest if you look at what Dan Scripps has done in
46:55
Michigan, he's absolutely said to consumers and DTE, hey, I am
47:01
not looking at any more of your rate requests unless you pair it
47:05
with whether this particular project could have been done
47:09
cheaper with a virtual power plant or grid enhancing
47:11
technologies. And so I do think that kind of
47:14
boldness is something commissions have the legal right
47:17
to do. But totally agree with you that
47:19
most commissioners don't feel like they have the air cover
47:23
from their governors or their state legislators to be that
47:26
bold. So what's the solution?
47:30
Well, some of the folks have been bold, right?
47:32
The Minnesota Commission, the Michigan Commission, but others
47:36
have been bold, like, you know, our friend Marissa over in
47:38
Connecticut, and she lost her job over being bold, right?
47:41
Then the governor didn't have her back, right?
47:43
And so you see a variety of different approaches.
47:47
But part of the reason why we're trying to get bills passed
47:51
across the country to explicitly require higher grid utilization
47:56
is to give people air cover, right?
47:57
And to send a signal directly from the state legislators to
48:01
the utilities saying we're watching you, you need to do
48:04
things that are in the best interest of ratepayers, not just
48:07
the data centers and shareholders, which is what
48:09
everybody's accusing them of. Absolutely.
48:12
And I'd actually add that if you're interested in this topic,
48:14
you should check out the work being done by the utilized
48:18
coalition as well as deploy action.
48:20
Those are both groups that are working at the state level to
48:22
try and get more legislation passed and potentially put
48:26
together some model legislation around grid utilization.
48:28
So thanks for the question. That was a really good one.
48:31
OK, Our next question comes from Steven Scarpula and Steven says
48:36
Jigger. I'm a finance professional and
48:38
listening to the show has me seriously considering a career
48:41
change to help move the energy transition forward. 2 questions.
48:45
What's your advice for someone making that jump from finance?
48:48
And are there specific people in the industry I should be
48:51
reaching out to? Well, it's a great question and
48:55
one that, you know, I don't know that I know which place you
48:59
should jump into from finance, but finance is a great place to
49:02
jump from. But there's a lot of, you know,
49:05
important roles in our industry. I mean, the beauty and you know,
49:08
Jamie, you know this better than I do, The value of marketing and
49:11
comms is super important. The value of construction
49:14
management is super important. There's a lot of folks that are
49:17
figuring out how to use next generation AI tools to reduce
49:21
the cost of building new, you know, plants.
49:23
There are folks who become experts in working with
49:27
regulators, who are working with state legislators and
49:29
policymakers to be able to, you know, educate them on finance
49:34
related issues and how money views certainty or uncertainty
49:39
or some of those other things. And so I think that no matter
49:42
what you want to do, there's room for you in the industry.
49:45
It's so diverse. Absolutely.
49:47
And I would add there are, there are lots of finance jobs in this
49:50
industry as well. I mean, I'm sitting here today
49:52
at the offices of Galvanized Climate Solutions.
49:55
They're, you know, working in the space Jiggers former firm
49:58
Generate Capital. I mean, there are a lot of
50:01
similar types of groups that work at the intersection of
50:03
clean energy and finance. So it can be done.
50:07
Definitely take the leap and you won't regret it.
50:10
It's very, very rewarding, gratifying work.
50:13
OK, our last question comes from Arjun Mehta.
50:16
And he says, Jigger, you spend all day telling the rest of us
50:19
to electrify everything. So I have to ask, what's
50:22
actually in your house? Uh oh.
50:24
He wants you set up solar on the roof, heat pump.
50:27
What do you got? What are you working with?
50:29
So I've got 2 houses, one in Bethesda, MD and then we have a
50:33
vacation place up in Deep Creek Lake, MD.
50:36
The one in Bethesda has a lot of tree cover on the roof and so
50:41
I've had it fully mapped and found the like little slivers of
50:44
places where the sun consistently shines.
50:46
And I put 2 kilowatts of solar there.
50:49
So I've done that right. My house had I ripped out the
50:54
natural gas heating and cooling systems to put in heat pumps.
50:58
And so we're all heat pumps. I've got a natural gas water
51:02
heater and so I'm waiting for that to kick it before I replace
51:05
it. And I'm natural gas stove which
51:08
will never die. I'm sure the stove will last for
51:12
years. And so we'll see when we can
51:14
actually shut off that at the vacation house though, we
51:17
actually built that from scratch.
51:18
And so that's an all electric house.
51:19
There is no natural gas service at that house.
51:22
It is super energy efficient, one of the most energy efficient
51:26
homes in Garrett County and in Maryland.
51:28
And so we actually need to bring in fresh air so that, you know,
51:33
the air is rotating. It's got induction stove, it's
51:36
got a heat pump. It's got, I think almost 16
51:38
kilowatts of solar on the roof. And so if the end of days comes,
51:43
I'm going to be able to be a prepper in that house along with
51:46
my two EV chargers that I've had installed there.
51:49
And so all my neighbors know that if something bad happens,
51:52
they can hang out of my house. Rad, I want to know more about
51:56
this setup in Deep Creek Lake. I am looking forward to visiting
52:00
your home there this summer when I also will just coincidentally
52:04
be in Deep Creek Lake to see your setup because that sounds
52:06
so cool. All right, so that's all for Ask
52:09
Jigger this week. Remember, you can send in your
52:11
own questions and like I said, if yours gets picked, we'll send
52:14
you an energy empire hat, the links in the show notes.
52:17
Thanks for listening. As always.
52:19
You can find us at energy empire dot FM and wherever you get your
52:23
podcasts. If you've got a second, please
52:25
leave us a review on Spotify, Apple podcast and also subscribe
52:30
on YouTube because that helps new listeners discover the show.
52:34
Thank you.