Latest / Clean Power Hour / Unlocking the Value Stack of Solar + Storage in PJM with David Braun | EP195

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Unlocking the Value Stack of Solar + Storage in PJM with David Braun | EP195 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  David Braun: Intelligent generation is we're really a software company. We're a services company that provides our software as a service to operate and dispatch the maps.
• 0:59
  David Braun: We're not the developer, we're not the PC, we work with them as partners to help develop projects, and then ultimately we operate them for the long term ours contracts are typically 10 to 15, even 20 years for the life of that of that asset and that battery, we're going to control and dispatch things.
• 1:15
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best and solar batteries and clean technologies every week? I want to go deeper into decarbonisation. We do too.
• 1:29
  intro: We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it.
• 1:36
  intro: Together, we can speed the energy transition.
• 1:43
  Tim Montague: Today on the Clean Power Hour behind the meter, solar and storage, my guest today is David Braun. He is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for intelligent generation, a trusted partner of ours here in the Midwest.
• 1:55
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the show, David.
• 1:57
  David Braun: Thank you, Tim.
• 1:57
  David Braun: Glad to be here. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah,
• 2:00
  Tim Montague: it's great to have it on the show. Again, I've had Mark through him a couple of times. And, you know, everybody's interested in batteries. Every every solar professional has to be a storage professional now, and so many, many companies EPCs installers, developers are drinking truly from a firehose, the value stack of storage is so varied, it is wonderful, but it is highly variable from geography to geography, from ISO to ISO, from utility to utility. And so we what's happening is, the United States is kind of getting carved up into local fiefdoms, and you have captured PJM. And my so congratulations.
• 2:50
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• 3:08
  Tim Montague: Conductor, make sure you and your customers get the best PPA deal every time free to use for developers and EBCs. Visit conductor.solar today.
• 3:19
  Tim Montague: Tell us a little bit about your background. You have you have a storied history in the in the energy industry? And how did you come to intelligent generation?
• 3:28
  David Braun: Yeah, I've been in the industry since since the beginnings of my career, I started out of Northwestern where I got a mechanical engineering degree and then joined comed to start my career.
• 3:37
  David Braun: And that was a great place to start relating to comed. And the utilities in general, often maligned but I'm glad I started getting a good a good understanding of the industry from the ground up from the meter from the transformer all the way back to the generator. I worked with large industrial accounts there. And even during pre deregulation days when comed was introducing some of the original demand response programs and had permission to do things like a limited number of special rate contracts. I was right at the forefront of that and so also had the privilege of having to pay for my MBA. So I'm always thankful for that as well. Something that I don't think happens a lot in corporate America anymore. But you know, from there moved into working with x what became excellent energy as markets were deregulating Exelon saw at the time was Unicom comments, then saw the threat as well as opportunities to their businesses and worked on some strategic planning. And then that led into joining what originally was a gas marketer that grew into Power Marketing, called Exelon energy and was able to write some of the original contracts that excellent had back in the day moved on from there to a couple of different companies across the deregulated market spectrum still typically working with large industrials or for direct energy around the PJM and miso markets for energy resources for about seven years, did some stints and consulting both with large industrials on the buy side as well as doing some renewable vppa ppa on site purchasing for some industrials as well and then had an opportunity to join a company called lightpath power which is a renewable asset owner and storage developer at the utility scale and 50 megawatts of wind and solar, all the assets that we bought from the likes of Exelon and NextEra. ran with the idea of hanging utility scale batteries, those interconnections and I mean the p&l and asset management and, and operations for those assets.
• 5:47
  David Braun: For several years. It was a great introduction and the deepening of my understanding of of renewable assets as well as storage, because we had a 20 megawatt battery in front of the meter in utility scale, and Pennsylvania developed another one in Texas at the time. So there was an interesting introduction into that side of the industry. So when this opportunity came about, it was interesting, I was contacted by a headhunter placement service, and they were looking for this this role, and I hadn't heard of intelligent generation I didn't know Jay marhofer didn't know Mark through was skeptical on the company, she couldn't really describe it, because what we do is not something that everyone is familiar with. And it but it was, I got to know them. As I got to dig into what they do. I really understood that this was not some fly by night operation, but really a very solid company, that no one matched up my skill sets, they were looking for somebody that had Yutani experience, retail energy experiences, large CNI experience, and renewables and battery experience at this thinking, there's really very few people with those kinds of very backgrounds to be able to fill this role. So that was perfect for me. And it has been, I've really enjoyed it. It's a very professional group. They've been at it for a long time, intelligent generation was started by Jay and a few other founders back in 2009. de Mar Hofer was the or was a it and utility consultant and attorney, and actually wrote a book in 2007, about the value stack that batteries can provide. And some was one of the first people talking about that and went on to form a company around that in 2009. And they initially started out in the incubator, technology incubator at Illinois Institute of Technology, bench testing the systems writing the initial code and getting started and and it's really grown from there. So it's a great group to work with. And, you know, I joined really to, to move us into a great professional marketing and sales initiative, and really ramp up our prospecting and enter sales, which is what's happening right now.
• 8:01
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I mean, I got to know intelligent generation while I was working at continental energy solutions.
• 8:06
  Tim Montague: Continental is a large solar and storage EPC in the Chicago area.
• 8:11
  Tim Montague: And, you know, you mentioned the value stack. And my listeners are familiar with this. But the value stack is unique to different geographies. So why don't we explain what we're talking about, and some of the variability in that stack, from place to place, solar is a wonderful thing. Okay, it's electricity from sunshine, which is truly amazing. A battery, on the other hand, can produce power, it can absorb power, it can give you power on demand 24/7. And so it's much more flexible. It is, it comes at a price. And luckily, we are at a point in the technology adoption curve where salt storage is now relatively affordable.
• 8:55
  Tim Montague: incentives do help we have a generous incentive in Illinois$250 per kWh, which I think is quite similar to an incentive that's going on in California right now. But the core customer at continental was large CNI projects. These are manufacturers warehouses, retailers, big box stores, schools, colleges. And when you pair the battery with the with the solar array, you are able to generate a bottom bottom line, much more ROI. It's a faster payback period. And it's much gentler, much more generous, simple payback, like you're gonna get more dollars out of the project. So explain for us though, what we mean by the value stack, and what is the unique value stack that intelligent generation is unlocking here in the Midwest.
• 9:51
  David Braun: That's a great introduction to that whole topic. And in concept, because it's really the heart of what we do. But let me stop and step back one second before delving into the stack and talk about the grid needs. Because this is really the beginning of what the stack is. Solar really needs to provide two things to customers.
• 10:10
  David Braun: One is energy. And that's really the fuel that drives all of our motors, lights, computers, everything else, but it also needs power. And that's the instantaneous capability of providing voltage effectively.
• 10:25
  David Braun: And it has to provide both it can't provide law and if it doesn't provide the other. So when you start thinking about generation, which is the basis of all of this are all fossil plants and nuclear plants and even even hydro can provide both very easily right? They they can provide the power that's the megawatts that they that they can generate instantaneously and then the fuel that goes into them provides the kilowatt hours over time. Solar and wind are our intermittent resources, right? We don't know, at any instant of time, how much power we're gonna get out of them. So they're very good at producing energy, they're great at producing energy, you know what, whenever there phenomenon is going on that right, you need to have wind blowing, that's high enough velocities to generate power in wind farms. And you need the sun to be shining, and shining to get the full capability on solar panels. So from a group dispatch perspective, they can't rely on knowing that if you need power at this moment, they can call on that asset and call on that resource and know that they can get 100 megawatts or whatever they need. So the grid needs developed. And that's where batteries can come in. Batteries can provide that power, right, they're not creating kilowatt hours, they're not creating energy, they're storing it. And then they're able to deliver that through their inverter. And that is an asset as a resource that the grid dispatcher can rely on in that time knowing that if he pushes that button, he's going to get X number of megawatts delivered at that moment. So when we talk about the value stack, that's where we begin to look at what are the things a battery can do. And a battery can do lots of things.
• 12:02
  David Braun: But it doesn't do anything unless someone tells it what to do and intelligent generation, we're the ones who tell it what to do. So from the value stack perspective, we're analyzing on a continuous basis in our data center on our algorithms, what is the best use of that battery in that moment of time, and then telling our battery fleet, which is really like a virtual power plant? It is a virtual power plant, what to do at that moment, and the value stack can be delivering energy. And so the considerations there are things like energy arbitrage, can you store cheap power, and deliver it back to the grid when power is expensive or extra extra power is needed? Or can you store solar energy that's not needed, because you've got too much this is what happens in California, right? We're all familiar with the famous duck curve out there where they generate too much solar during the afternoon. And they as the sun sets, they they have this huge need for generation, and the solar can't provide it. So store that energy when when there's too much solar and then deliver it back in those evening hours. And arbitrage that. So that's one element, that energy element, we can provide demand, we can buy capacity to the grid.
• 13:15
  David Braun: And so from a billing standpoint, when you look at Bill structures, every customer, every utility, industrial customer, or commercial customers paying for two things are paying for energy. And they're also but they're also paying for demand. And that demand is how fast we're using the energy, what's that peak load. And so there are several different ways that's measured there that that's used. One is just for paying for the distribution system, that's usually a monthly demand charge.
• 13:42
  David Braun: There's also capacity, which is generation capacity, and PJM, and miso that's charged by the ISO to the load serving entities. So your utility or your retail energy supplier is charged for that generation capacity based on various various calculations, but set based on auction prices. So these are these are market based prices that change over time, usually set for a year, and transmissions another one. So what you're really what is being paid for is having the system capability in place to provide that instantaneous load capability to serve that load.
• 14:20
  David Braun: So that's capacity, that's transmission, that's demand. And then there's a lot of other things that still need to take place to keep the lights on.
• 14:29
  David Braun: These are what are known as ancillary services. These are reserve margins, these are regulation regulation of frequency regulation, voltage.
• 14:35
  David Braun: And that's another area that batteries can provide that because they can provide instantaneous, either storage or dispatch or delivery of energy and power at instantaneous notice. And traditionally, that's been done by fossil units, because we can spin them a little faster, a little slower to keep the grid in balance. But as we have fewer of that type of asset and more and broader based like solar and wind, we don't have those assets that can do that. And so that's where the batteries step in and provide those ancillary services. And as we know, batteries can also provide resilience, right? If the grid goes black, you have a battery sitting there that can be relied upon to provide power to your facility to keep the lights on at least for a short time. And whilst outages are short enough that our new a four hour battery can cover that and beyond that, you still need a backup generator. So those are all the elements of the value stack. And like I said, Tim, the value of those depends greatly on the tariffs and those tariffs are set at the FERC level for things like capacity and transmission and at the state level utility level for things like demand and energy. And what we can do to manipulate those and save customers money depends on where you bar and that's really that that's that's that's the company's motto right? One of the things we talk about is earn save, protect, we help customers earn money by delivering ancillary service services to the grid and being paid for it. Save money, helping customers save money on the bill by reducing these these cost elements and then protect protect your facility and keep the lights on.
• 16:12
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• 16:48
  Tim Montague: So we should probably get into a case study honestly because this is this stock is fairly abstract for the average listener. Now if you're a battery storage developer, you understand this completely. And this is your daily drive so to speak, but you have a myriad of wonderful cases on your website, go to Intelgen.com Intelgen.com and you'll see G and W electric apt Magid glove, continental Libman s&c Electric just to name a few of these mostly industrial facilities, but not all continental is the office work on an electrical and continental energy solutions call home? But what is it at the outset I guess that you're looking at? Well, how do you explain the value to a customer. And then if you want, let's pick one of those, you know, you have many to choose from. But I think that will help our listener really understand because it truly is a game changer. And this is hard, I think for CNI, EPCs and developers who have really focused on solar historically, to kind of get their arms around this value stack and how it plays out in the real world.
• 19:05
  David Braun: Yeah, it's a difficult thing, because most customers don't have the expertise and looking at their power bill. They think it's a kilowatt hour and a kilowatt hours a kilowatt hour. And that's all they're buying. But when you really break it down, you know, there's all these different services that stand behind that. And that's really the value stack lie. So we started talking about again, earn save, protect, we help help you save money on your bill earn money by providing services to the grid, from the battery. And by dispatching that battery, and then we can protect the your asset, and that has values as well, by keeping the lights on and keeping. If it's a manufacturing plant, preventing loss, loss time lost materials, in waste. And then yeah, we I do usually go through that value stack. And then we begin to drill in on on how those values are provided things like capacity and transmission, the price that you pay for there, the cost you pay for that as an industrial customer is set on just five hours per year, what they call the five coincident peaks, which is when the grind sets its peak for the year. And the way we attack, that savings is by predicting when those are going to happen, you don't know when they're going to happen till after the fact. So we predict when those are going to happen and and those days will store up the energy all night fill it up at the battery fall.
• 20:21
  David Braun: And then in those hours where we expect, one of those peak hours could occur, we just met discharge the batteries, so that what is showing up on your utility meter is lower by the amount of the battery. So we can we can substantially reduce what the capacity and transmission charges are. Based on that meant to do that about 20 times a year to make sure we hit those five, and they can the five cap can be different than the five transmission hours.
• 20:49
  Tim Montague: So you're getting a signal from the utility when they anticipate a capacity day, they
• 20:56
  David Braun: do not give a signal on that no, you're up, they do a lot of forecasts, the ISO gives us a load forecast every day. But that's not necessarily accurate. So we're taking that into account. But we're also doing our own prediction and we're buying services from others and using things like artificial intelligence now to be able to predict when those are going to happen but you don't know what you don't know what was peaks are going to happen until the either the end of the summer or in some cases the end of the year. And then what you what what you did use during those events that sets the baseline for what you have to pay for capacity and transmission the next year. So if you're if you're if you're a customer who's buying a fixed rate for kilowatt hour and they don't break all this stuff out, it's also behind the scenes your suppliers to build all that in.
• 21:43
  David Braun: And that's why sometimes you see some some pass throughs of those on your bills and adjustments for things like transmission, we recommend to our customers that they take the auto services as pass throughs and just paint what they actually owe, based on the ISO calculations, because then we can use by using the batteries, we can reduce what those costs are. So in some cases, we can we can take that to zero. And that, you know, that's 25 to 30% of an industrial customers bill is in those capacity and transmission charges. So let's
• 22:14
  Tim Montague: stop there. I stopped there, David. Okay, so listeners, what David is talking about these capacity charges, okay. In California, you attack demand charges, because demand charges are quite high. That is not the case in the Midwest, you can attack demand charges, but they're not going to make a huge difference. These capacity charges that David is referencing are going to make a huge difference. And I'll just call out what I see, in my experience working with continental and iG as as the stack and let's just pick Libman as a good example. Okay, we just talked about capacity charges, okay, up to 30% of of a customer's bill. With a battery, you're attacking those charges by pre loading some some aspect of the facility and then discharging the battery as fast as you can to reduce the load on the facility during that window when the greatest humming ride through, okay, Libman is an injection molder. A uncontrolled outage is very expensive for a company like that, where they got plastic machinery that gets gummed up if it goes down in an uncontrolled manner. So the battery allows you to ride through, it's a form of resiliency. And resiliency is huge, but very hard to value, generally speaking, depending on the setting, so every company will have a unique value for resiliency. And then these ancillary services, frequency regulation, voltage regulation, you know, many people say, well, that's not bankable, so we're going to ignore that, well, you guys have a track record of delivering this service, you know, for your customers over now a long period of time. And so you can compare the before and after, you know, before what you modeled, and after what reality showed, and you've demonstrated that within a, I think, a 90% plus confidence interval, that you're hitting the mark, and you're delivering value. So the utility is paying you for the services that the battery is providing to the grid, which it needs. Batteries are a wonderful thing for the grid operator, the more solar we install, the more batteries that a grid operator ultimately is going to want. On the grid. Did I get that? Right? You
• 24:35
  David Braun: got that?
• 24:35
  David Braun: Absolutely right. I'm impressed how well you know our case studies and talking about things like women and what they're doing down there. But yeah, I we haven't really talked in depth much about about the regulation services that the battery can provide. And what you're referring to there was frequency regulation where when that's the best operation for the battery, that's about 90% of the time where the most value is not actually taking a signal every two seconds from from the grid operator that tells the battery a charge or discharge, we reprocess process that signal based on where our battery states of charge are and where we want them to be, and then tell the battery to charge or discharge. And that is a market price. The PJM is the market. So as they're buying these services from generators and batteries, and others to provide and keep the grid flowing, they have to pay market price for that. So that's where you refer to is it bankable, or is it not? We have a history though, in these markets that go back more than 10 years. In so we know where the where these prices have been in the past. And we also can look at correlations. ancillary services frequency regulation is correlated 90% to the price of energy to the real time price of energy, which is correlated to the price of gas. So as you see those markets go up and down, we'll also see the other the other services go up and down in price. Case in point 2022.
• 26:03
  David Braun: frequency regulation paid them was $400,000 a megawatt last year paying closer to probably 150 120 $550,000 A megawatt so because 22 Things are really high energy prices. 23 They came down, they came down a lot.
• 26:17
  David Braun: These services also really are paid a lot during grid distress events. So if you think about, you know, 10 days ago, two weeks ago, when we when everything was so cool. We were subzero in Chicago and across the Midwest, some of those hours paid paid a lot for these regulation services because they're needed to keep the grid in balance, the grid becomes relatively unstable. You And those events and and batteries can help keep the lights on and make sure that we don't have power outages and and then get paid very handsomely for it when things are going well, the prices, the prices are low, but when we have a little more distress or higher energy prices, they do get higher. But so you know, so we do look at things like history, in correlations. And when someone tells me, I don't think frequency is going to be worth anything in the futures. And why is the correlation there break.
• 27:09
  David Braun: It's been there for it's been there for 15 years, and suddenly, you're thinking it's breaking. So it's something that we look at. But that's also why we like working behind the meter, because we have all these other value stack opportunities to provide value to the customer. And so none of them are critical to the asset, economic performance, like they would be with some in front of the meter batteries that may only be doing frequency regulation. Right? They're down to just one risk element. And that's that increases the risk.
• 27:39
  David Braun: I gave you guys a couple of the case studies to like you mentioned before, a big one we like to point to from resiliency as GE and W electric that's another injection molding operation. They actually were able to put a number on on their losses, and they built a micro grid there at their plant in Bolingbrook where they manufacture electrical switchgear that goes on to the smart grid that the utilities are building right now. Their operations we're seeing on average about 13 utility grid events a year that were interrupting their injection molding processes. And when that happens, they they're down for as much as a shift while the maintenance technicians come in and clean out. The waste product that got stuck in there when when the lights went out. And and sometimes it is such a short duration outage that you don't even notice it with the eye these are these are sub second outages. Sometimes we're tripping off their moulding machines. So ultimately, they had an event the the owner there, John Mueller said I've had enough. Let's fix this, we're most likely company, let's apply our own smart grid engineering and make this happen. So they built a micro grid with two megawatts of solar on the roof. A two megawatt flow battery vanadium redox flow battery. And he a flywheel. 1300 KV a flywheel that helps keep the lights on sub cycle. That's how fast they can respond and but only lasted under a minute.
• 29:14
  David Braun: And then all that backed up by diesel generation, which they never have to use anymore, because they've got so many other things ahead of it. So they can actually, if push games comes to shove, and the lights were on for a long time, they could continue to to operate their plant and isolate it and island it and keep the lights on. So they put a number on that every time they had an outage, even a brief one, it was costing them hundreds of 1000s of dollars. So they've already they've already avoided you know, in the past 18 months that systems been off, they've already avoided close to 20 events that would have taken them out and cost them millions of dollars in losses. So that value then can be built into the economics of the project. And it makes for a very quick payback.
• 29:59
  David Braun: I'm
• 29:59
  Tim Montague: just curious, when you're designing and then ultimately constructing a micro grid. Is it that much more difficult if you have multiple sources of generation per se, like the flywheel and the generator and the battery versus just say solar and storage? It's
• 30:19
  David Braun: a question of how, you know, is there value in bringing those other elements into the into the project and into the micro grid, which are some out there that are not micro grid at all. They're they're a battery. The battery is really operating independently of solar and can be used if necessary to support the light hit support the operations at that facility, but it doesn't have to and it doesn't do that automatically.
• 30:44
  David Braun: But you look at other cases, like Elana Lubin and GW and apt where they didn't want that element of backup power. And adding adding the additional elements into that is, you know, it's difficult, but it comes down to problem solving and coding, and making sure that the right operations are in place and controlled so that when something does happen, the right things happen. It's a it's a bunch of different ends. And you know, if the lights go out, do this, and then do this and then do this if there if that's not all arranged correctly. Things don't happen the right way. But it also takes engineering and the front end to understand what automatic switches need to be in place. And some of those can get very expensive. If you need really rapid transfer of power.
• 31:33
  David Braun: You need something like a static switch or even a flywheel and then that's just starts to increase the cost of the project. So if you do have a big resiliency need it makes sense.
• 31:45
  David Braun: It was as app says, you know, their their revenues are millions of dollars a day through the storefronts and through their website, which is which they host their, their, their their store. And if the lights go out, it's the cash register is not ringing to the tune of 10s of 1000s of dollars per hour or even for shorter times than that. So keeping the lights on is very important to them. They have been they've had some problem solving issues, some some growth issues on these things to do the first time the lights went out, the generators kicked on, and the battery still was looking to be charged at the same time. And so the agents ended up failing, because they couldn't generate a power to supply the store and the battery at the same time. So now it's okay, if the grid isn't there, we have to, in the end the generator start once one of the battery can can control and keep the lights on until the generators get on. And then once they're on there, they run off of those and not the battery. So it's those kinds of just coding things to make sure that the micro grid is doing the right things. But it takes infrastructure and just take some know how and that's where our partners come in with that number.
• 32:53
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I would imagine that there's a certain amount of sophistication needed in this software and hardware and maybe applications of machine learning and such. I don't want to get too deep in those weeds, though, I want to keep this fairly high level. I mean, ultimately, what I want my listeners to consider if you're working in PJM, or miso is reach out to me and I'll connect you to David or go to intelligent generation. They have a contact form there Intelgen.com. So David, in our last couple of minutes together. Oh, and I also wanted to know that you will be at the upcoming Midwest solar Expo may 20 to 22nd. The URL is Midwest solar Expo, I'm very involved in that event. So I'll be there as well. So you could meet David and company face to face at the Midwest solar Expo, which is going to be right near O'Hare. David, what do EPCs and developers need to know about behind the meter solar and storage that they may not know today, especially working in the Midwest, but could be in other markets as well.
• 33:59
  David Braun: I think what they need to know is you the battery is a great way to enhance the returns on the project, especially in markets like Illinois, where on top of the on top of the EITC. And the IRA have we're all familiar with Illinois brings in some great rebates through Seija, the clean and equitable jobs act from 2021, that it's probably going to get to get some more some more amendments to coming soon, hopefully this year. You know, when we look at solar alone in Illinois, we probably see, you know, four or five year payback on a solar project alone in Ohio, that might be five or six years, when you bring a battery on to that we're knocking six months to a year off of that off of that payback period. So we're increasing the returns because of these other other capabilities and other savings and revenues that the battery can bring to the to the projects. And then if you have a customer that wants to talk about micro grids, they want to talk about resiliency. Is is gentleman at GW likes to say intelligent generation is the cash register that helps them pay for that micro grid because we bring in these other services by controlling when that batteries dispatching and earn money and save money for them.
• 35:15
  David Braun: Yeah,
• 35:18
  Tim Montague: just to be clear, you're a software as a service company, you create the initial financial model for how a micro grid is going to ROI for a customer. But you're not the integrator, you're not the EPC and a good EPC like continental shout out to Brian Howard, who was on the show just a couple of weeks ago, go to cleanpowerhour.com. Check out all of our interviews. We're dropping two interviews a week now, and click on the YouTube icon. We have a very robust YouTube channel, please subscribe, like, and reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from my listeners and connecting with you and hearing your ideas. But when it comes to getting these projects done, David, do you have some words of wisdom for our audience?
• 36:03
  David Braun: Sure. Yeah. And let me just, I liked the clarification that she gave a minute ago want to kind of drill into that a little more for a second. But yeah, intelligent generation is we're really a software company. We're a services company that provides our software as a service to operate and dispatch the batteries. We're not the developer, we're not the EPC. We work with them as partners to help develop projects and then ultimately we operate them for the long term large contracts are typically 10 to 15, even 20 years for the life of that of that asset. And that battery, we're going to control and dispatch things. But we're also I want to I want to be I'm going to point out we're also a member of the ISOs we are a market participant and member of PJM and miso Just like the utilities and the generators are, and that's where we get to do things like bidding these assets into the market and into the grid and earning those wholesale revenues, like we've talked about earlier in this discussion. So in terms of recommendations, and working with batteries, you know, I, my recommendation is, you bring us in early and, you know, it's we're pretty easy to work with, give me a utility bill, one month utility bill in one month bill from the retail supplier.
• 37:13
  David Braun: And we can we can get energy data, we need the the our labor energy data, and we can often get that from the utility directly. And we can help generate a pro forma and tell you what that battery can can do, we can help size it and really help you understand how that's going to work to the project and increase the economics and the benefit to the customer. And we can do that working directly with the customers. And we also typically, were doing that with developers, and EPCs. So yeah, reach out to us or come to Midwest solar Expo in May. And love to talk to you and and understand what what your needs are, but also talk about about batteries and how batteries can really help enhance the projects that are being developed right now across the Midwest.
• 37:59
  Tim Montague: Yeah, and if things go well, we will be having a tour of the app facility led by intelligent generation. So if you're thinking about coming to the Midwest for solar and storage conference, the Midwest Expo is a great place to be. There are three conferences this year in Chicago, Expo being the first then we have the solar farm summit in July, and our a plus in UK. Sorry, November. So just go to cleanpowerhour.com. Click on the Events tab and you'll see all of those events highlighted.
• 38:31
  Tim Montague: You might be wondering, how do you see an eye solar PPAs get financed? For many it remains a mystery. For others, there's conductor, conductor solar helps hundreds of developers and EPCs.
• 38:42
  Tim Montague: Find investors, close transactions and collaborate effectively. With competitive bids from high quality partners.
• 38:49
  Tim Montague: Conductor make sure you and your customers get the best PPA deal every time free to use for developers and EBCs visit conductor.solar today.
• 38:59
  Tim Montague: I want to thank David Braun, of intelligent generation for coming on the show. You guys are truly one of my all time favorite companies here in the Midwest and happy to answer any of my listeners questions. I have extensive experience working with IG. I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Thank you, David.
• 39:17
  David Braun: Thank you, Tim.
• 39:17
  David Braun: It's been a pleasure. Hey, listeners.
• 39:21
  Tim Montague: This is Tim, I want to give a shout out to all of you. I do this for you twice a week. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving us your time. I really appreciate you and what you're all about.
• 39:34
  Tim Montague: You are part and parcel of the energy transition, whether you're an energy professional today, or an aspiring energy professional. So thank you, I want to let you know that the Clean Power Hour has launched a listener survey. And it would mean so much to me. If you would go to cleanpowerhour.com. Click on the About Us link right there on the main navigation that takes you to the about page. And you'll see a big graphic listener survey, just click on that graphic, and it takes just a couple of minutes. If you fill out the survey, I will send you a lovely baseball cap with our logo on it. The other thing I want our listeners to know is that this podcast is made possible by corporate sponsors.
• 40:31
  Tim Montague: We have chin power systems, the leading three phase string inverter manufacturer in North America. So check out CBS America. But we are very actively looking for additional support to make this show work.
• 40:44
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• 40:50
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• 40:53
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• 41:29
  Tim Montague: So check out clean power hour.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.