Latest / Clean Power Hour / Solar Manufacturing: Expert Perspectives from OMCO Solar’s Eric Goodwin | EP255

Transcript

Solar Manufacturing: Expert Perspectives from OMCO Solar’s Eric Goodwin | EP255 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Eric Goodwin: From a design standpoint, again, we've got two areas where we put pre assembled products in place. Probably the most significant one is our bearing assembly that that we have our own patented design on, and it's got mobility. It's a pre assembled piece that just connects on four four bolt points to the to the pile, and so you don't have to do any additional assembly. You can drop the torque tube right on top of the bearing, and then you have some adjustability, up to six levels of adjustability for misaligned piles.
• 1:23
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition here at the Clean Power Hour, our host, Tim Montague, bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization.
• 1:33
  intro: We do too. We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it together. We can speed the energy transition
• 1:49
  Tim Montague: today on the Clean Power Hour scaling manufacturing in the solar industry. I'm Tim Montague, your host. Welcome to the Clean Power Hour. My guest today is Eric Goodwin. He is the Vice President of Business Development for a very large manufacturer called omco solar.
• 2:02
  Tim Montague: You may have heard of them.
• 2:06
  Tim Montague: Welcome to the show, Eric.
• 2:08
  Eric Goodwin: Thank you, Tim. I appreciate the opportunity. It's good to talk to you. This has
• 2:12
  Tim Montague: been a long time in the coming I'm excited to bring you on to the show. As my listeners know, I am a officially a geek for solar racking, and that is the the majority of your manufacturing, but not all of it is. We're going to talk about your partnership with First Solar and making their back rail. But Eric, before we go into the omco legacy in the solar industry, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into clean energy? Absolutely.
• 2:41
  Eric Goodwin: Tim, I got into solar in 2009 after spending about almost 20 years in automotive and aerospace, working in both manufacturing and supply chain, kind of by a whim, I went to a solar conference in LA California, met a gentleman named Mark Henderson, who's the CEO of a startup solar company called Ray tracker in Pasadena, California.
• 3:07
  Eric Goodwin: And I really was looking at the growth of solar. Was always very interested in renewables, and I had the opportunity to join to, you know, take a big career change and join a startup company, startup solar tracker company and rate tracker. And roughly within a year, rate tracker was acquired by first solar, joining first solar in 2000 10,000 well, actually january 2011 and we had the opportunity, in my five years at first solar to scale the first solar design version of that tracker product. And that actually linked me to AMCO, because at that time, I'm CO was a contract manufacturer for that product and provided the module mount for that tracker. So got in from a startup to be able to be part of First Solar and then in 2017 I came to omco, right at the time where, where we transitioned from a contract manufacturer, you know, making everybody else's foundations, fixed tilt racking tracker components to starting to bring our own products to market over the last seven years, which we now have done. So it's been a wild ride. It's been a great journey. So far, it's seems like it's went by really fast, and I know there's still a lot of fun ahead of us.
• 4:29
  Tim Montague: So Ray tracker was acquired by first solar, the thin film solar panel maker also based in Ohio. And whatever happened to that product? Does it still exist in some form?
• 4:40
  Eric Goodwin: It does not as Ray tracker. When first solar made the acquisition, they basically, we closed the rate tracker business and continued to support it from a warranty standpoint. But the acquisition was really focused on the series four module at the time, and first solar's own projects. And so, you know, at that time, the rate tracker product became the first solar tracker.
• 5:07
  Tim Montague: Got it, got it cool. So fast forward. You You joined the omco team, and I'm CO, as I understand, it got into racking in around 2007 is that right? Yes,
• 5:23
  Eric Goodwin: that's, that's correct. Tim, we so I'm CO is a company has been around since 1955 we actually have a birthday coming up next year. We'll be 70 years old. Wow. Yeah, it's, it's been, it's been great. You know, we've, we've always had a mix of different businesses as a role former steel, but we were known before we got into solar, and still are primarily as a truck and trailer bumper, a lot of transportation component. Is that a role formed. We also manufacture a lot of material handling products, many different role form shapes in various industries, as a contract manufacturer, but in 2007 we started in solar as a contract manufacturer. Gary Schuster, our CEO, joined the company in 2006 he's still our CEO to this day, and he had a vision to get us into the solar side, being able to look at the growth. And I think he was ahead of his time a little bit, and and looking at, you know, where our next growth was going to be.
• 6:24
  Eric Goodwin: And about a year into that process is where we really started to talk with first solar as a they were kind of an initial adopter customer at that time. And that was the same time where first solar started to vertically integrate. And, you know, brought their own EPC, started to bring their own designs. And you know, we started with a nine megawatt project in Boulder City, Nevada, and the 2008 time frame, and we thought that was the biggest project in the world. And at that time, it really meant a lot. And, you know, we had an opportunity to continue to grow over about nine years. As for solar scale, their EPC business,
• 7:08
  Tim Montague: well, it's kind of appropriate. Back in the day, nine megawatts was a big project, right? And now fast forward, fast forward to 2024 a big project would be 100 megawatts. And I think in the pre show you were telling me that you're now closing 100 megawatt plus projects, right?
• 7:26
  Eric Goodwin: Yes, yes. Tim, I mean, we have, you know, obviously the timeline of a lot of these tracker projects, or they're, they're very fluid, and sometimes they push a little bit, but we, we have some partners that we're working very close with that we're looking at, you know, we've done projects within the 30 to 40 megawatt range over this past year, and we're in the process of finishing. We're on the second project of a total 80 megawatt portfolio in New York.
• 7:55
  Eric Goodwin: But we've got two or three announcements that we're expecting to make in early 2025 and then in parallel, we'll continue to work with our partners at create energy as they begin module production in the US, in Portland, Tennessee, in probably, I think it's supposed to be end of first or early second quarter next year.
• 8:17
  Eric Goodwin: So eventually, we're looking forward to, hopefully by mid next year, some additional announcements. We've always taken the position when we get into new markets and scale that we want to walk before we run that was always the when we launched our tracker in 2019 I think that's paid off for us.
• 8:35
  Eric Goodwin: And so we're really targeting some key partners on these initial larger projects, and and we're excited about that. I
• 8:44
  Tim Montague: want to talk about the partnership with create. But before we do that, I think we should set the table a little more. I mean, omco is the largest custom roll former in the United States. So it's a very big steel manufacturer, steel products manufacturer, got into solar in oh seven, you know, supporting other racking companies, and then you've slowly but surely rolled out the omco brand, and now have gone to market, what, five years ago, with the tracker correct. So tell us a little bit about the solar racking business for omco.
• 9:21
  Tim Montague: What's the scale of that? And how does it break down fixed versus tracker? Yeah. Tim,
• 9:27
  Eric Goodwin: so over the last two years, I would say, you know, we launched our fixed tilt product, our choice rack, initially, our field fast product, and it morphed into our direct bold option in 2017 and we had the opportunity by 2019 to start doing some very large utility scale projects on the fixed tilt side. And so this year, we'll end up around 1.2 gigawatts of fixed tilt. Wood Mackenzie starting to track that data on the fixed tilt side, it's still very kind of informal. I think next year they'll probably have more formal numbers. But, you know, we've, we've been told by wood Mackenzie that we're either the market leader or one of the market leaders in fixed tilt, and so we're still seeing a healthy amount of fixed tilt projects that are we're doing a 350 megawatt for instance, in Kentucky right now. Lot of reasons driving that, everything from terrain to O and M to Ira prevailing wage in some cases.
• 10:24
  Eric Goodwin: But I also think it's a it's a function of the market getting bigger and solar growing, that you're seeing more in those projects. And so our goal on the fixed tilt side is to be, to be the market leader. We we believe we have a platform to grow on, and a product that's that's performed very well on the tracker side, you know, just kind of looking at onco as a whole. We are very active in the DG market. And. 10 megawatt and under will always play in those markets, because they're growing and because we have a factory direct model that allows us to be competitive, we have very quick lead times we're making everything in house. There's some advantages there. And so for us, last year was about also transitioning into the utility scale. So we'll you know, we're hopeful to be able to do, you know, two to 300 megawatts next year, at least be at some point of completing. Over the last five years, we've done about just under 400 megawatts of projects, which total 150 projects, most of them 10 megawatts and under, because the goal, again, was to walk before we run, make sure we have a product that's reliable. We have some projects, I'm sorry, some customers that were on project number 30, on which we're really pleased about, as far as you know, being able to maintain customers and being able to establish repeat customers. But back to AMCO manufacturing as whole. You know, we have six manufacturing facilities throughout the US. Our most recent one was opened up in Huntsville last year.
• 12:00
  Eric Goodwin: Huntsville, Alabama, and we have that plant. We have a secondary plant in Talladega, Alabama, which we opened in 2014 we're headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, which is where the company was founded. We have manufacturing there, and we have two manufacturing plants in the Pearson, Warsaw, Indiana area.
• 12:17
  Eric Goodwin: And then our solar market was started in our Phoenix Arizona plant, which is where I'm based.
• 12:26
  Eric Goodwin: So between those six plants, we got about 700,000 square foot of manufacturing space, and depending on the mix between tracker and fix, up to about 13 gigawatts of annual capacity. So we're ready to roll. And this year has been a nice growth year for us. It's actually been a breakout year in growth. And you know, we're now positioned to take that next step. I
• 12:53
  Tim Montague: think domestic content is a very hot topic. Of course, there's racking modules, inverters, and they all matter in the greater scheme of things.
• 13:53
  Tim Montague: But every developer, asset owner and EPC is trying to get the products that they are installing to meet the domestic content requirements, which gives you a 10% adder for the ITC, the base is 30% and then you can reach up to 60% if you can get the domestic adder Energy Community and LMI adder.
• 14:17
  Tim Montague: So anyway, anything else you want to say about your manufacturing footprint. I love that number, 13 gigawatts.
• 14:25
  Tim Montague: That's a big number. That would be almost a quarter of what we can install nationally now in the United States. So that's a big footprint. Yeah,
• 14:40
  Eric Goodwin: yeah, no. I mean, and we do have the ability. I mean, we have a lot of work to do. We're not close to using that capacity. Obviously, we do have, you know, a longer term plan to, you know, be able to increase capacity over the next five years if needed. But, um, yeah, on the domestic content piece, Tim, I can kind of add a little bit, kind of how we look at it, and where our position is right now, we've always had the same business model that we do with us, steel, US manufacturing, you know, as a as a steel company that buys allocate steel across multiple, multiple markets, we've always had a lot of buying power, which has allowed us To be competitive. It's allowed us to deal with things like COVID or times where allocation might be an issue. It also, it also has allowed us to flex schedules a lot, because we don't always have to take material if a customer says, hey, my project's moving to the right couple months, sometimes we were able to hold steel and not really have, you know, a noticeable impact. And so, you know, I think the steel piece is a big, big part for us, and also some of the partnerships we have, we have great agreements with steel providers like new core. When we look at some of the work we're doing with first solar in Alabama that's tied into new core, we make the back rail for the series seven, which is a separate part under our solar umbrella, versus what what we do is in our core products, which is our tractor and our fixed tilt. But part of that, that agreement with First Solar is basically a triangle supply chain in Alabama with new core steel in Decatur Alabama for solar outside of Decatur Alabama, and then our plant in Huntsville, and they're all within 23 miles apart. And so, you know, those are the kind of partnerships I think we're seeing a lot in the US. But, you know, back to the domestic content piece. You know, we're the only tracker supplier, I believe, in the US market, that makes every single structural component of the tracker.
• 16:41
  Eric Goodwin: Product, including torque tubes ourselves in both Indiana and Phoenix ourselves. And so in addition to the structural components and the benefit that allows to get to that extra 10% we also can realize the full 45x tax credit, the manufacturing tax credit, both on the torque tube, and then our bearing fasteners and rails. And so what's been good there? We're currently our Bill of Material with foundations, we make our own foundations as well, is at about 88 to 92% trackers looked at as a manufactured product, so they exclude the piles for the tracker. So, you know, we still come in around 75 78% from a cost model standpoint. But with the recent I think it's been about six, seven months now of the Treasury guidance to also allow our developers, our customers, to use the safe harbor template. And I won't get too much in the math, because I know a lot of details, but the safe harbor template is very cut and dry and and you can look at what the percentage of a project is. And I think the safe harbor template is also very beneficial to us module suppliers. I think it's very kind of lean towards the module components. And so right now, our tracker would accomplish 13% of a total project. And if you pair it with the first solar module, I think Helene, we're doing a lot of DG stuff with the lean and others, you're able to have a pretty compelling value proposition to get over that 40% and I think the last thing I'll say about that is, I think the tracker companies in the US, and the big players have done a great job of bringing more manufacturing to the US. And I think every one of us has an action plan. I think at least the major players of getting to 100% domestic content tracker. And so, you know, our target, we've got a plan that's coming together, is to have that option by the end of second quarter next year. And, you know, and they're obviously in the two areas where we lack right now are the dampers on our product and the drive motors.
• 18:49
  Eric Goodwin: And so both of those suppliers are, you know, close to being able to make product in the US.
• 18:57
  Eric Goodwin: So from a domestic content standpoint, we've never changed anything. It's great to see how the IRA has really, you know, lit the fire on us.
• 19:04
  Eric Goodwin: Manufacturing, Oh, for sure, for sure, very beneficial for us.
• 19:07
  Eric Goodwin: Obviously,
• 19:11
  Tim Montague: the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over eight gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS product lineup includes string inverters ranging from 25 kW to 350 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS. 350 KW is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts. CPS is the world's most bankable inverter brand, and is America's number one choice for solar plants now offering solutions for commercial utility ESS and Balance of System Requirements, go to chintpowersystems.com or call 855-584-7168, to find out More. So when you're talking to customers. I mean, you're selling a commodity solar racking, and I'd love for you to break down for us, though, how you differentiate omco from the handful of other options that an installer or developer or asset owner might have both for the fixed and tracker market.
• 20:23
  Eric Goodwin: Yes, absolutely.
• 20:23
  Eric Goodwin: Tim, you know, on the fixed tilt side there, well, the ability to do both is really helpful for some projects, because we're seeing some hybrid projects. So we try to maximize that. Some tracker suppliers just make trackers, but on the fixed tilt side, really what we've tried to do on all of our products. We did eight gigawatts of everybody else's product as a contract manufacturer over 10 years almost. And so with that, we try to take a lot of lessons and what happens in the field. And so a constant theme in our product is trying to look at pre assembled in the factory when we can. And so on our fixed tilt, our tilt bracket, which is kind of one of the major components that hooks to the purlin is, is pre assembled in our factory, rolls up very nicely. It's easy to put into a truck, unload, and then the fact that we we make our own driven C file, which we have a thicker gage version that's got, you know, two plus gigawatts deployed that performs comparably to a W file. We can source W files. We know foundation is religion to our customers and and we have some customers that would rather go with the W than a C option. But that being said, we're able to use the in house model. The fact that there's one team from the second appeal is issued to the last. Part is delivered to the warranty team. We don't have to source any of these products on the fixed tilt side, so it makes it very easy for the customer experience. And also, our lead times are very short for a 20 megawatt and under fixed tilt project, we can deliver normally within about six, seven weeks after po if needed, and that that includes all of the engineering foundation design instruction sets. So on the fixed tilt, we meet the 100% us and steel and iron requirements, it's pretty, pretty more straightforward on the IRA versus the tracker. And then when we look at our value proposition on the tracker side, we once again lean on our vertically integrated ability to have one source to talk to. Our drive motors currently come from Mexico. So do our dampers, which actually the Mexico location is literally three hours from our Arizona plant. So we're not relying on ports. We're not relying on epidemics or global geopolitical events over the last three or four years, we've really been able to be very stable and what our supply chain and very, very elegant supply chain and lot of our customers, we've been able to help save project schedules, because we can react so quick. From a design standpoint, again, we've got two areas where we put pre assemble products in place.
• 23:04
  Eric Goodwin: Probably the most significant one is our bearing assembly, that that we have our own patented design on, and it's got the ability. It's a pre assembled piece that just connects on four, four bolt points to the to the pile, and so you don't have to do any additional assembly. You can drop the torque tube right on top of the bearing, and then you'll have some adjustability, up to six levels of adjustability for misaligned piles. And so, you know, we know on project sites, every pile is not going to go in perfect. So you know, that feature is something we saw from being in the field all these years. And from a design standpoint, we also have pre assembled module mount and we've got a couple different module mount designs for different bi facial modules, versus series six, series seven for solar. And so again, trying to look at ways to have less things, to put together less pieces of hardware. And in our tracker lead times for, you know, 20 megawatts and under right now are probably closer to nine to 10 weeks to start delivery. And so again, our lead times are very competitive. We have a lot of steel going through all of our factories, again, across multiple markets.
• 24:15
  Eric Goodwin: So, you know, it does allow us to respond pretty quickly. I think those areas, those are the things we try to bring in, is what we would hope to be differentiators. Yeah, I'm,
• 24:29
  Tim Montague: I'm curious to learn more about this bearing system. I was, I was on your website yesterday checking that out, and it is very unique in how flexible and adjustable it is. I mean, you're using a slew drive, like many, like, many trackers, which is, which is like a drive that comes from other industries. I'm not sure what it was invented for, but it comes, you know, it's another commodity that is just integrated into the tracker market. But this, this flexibility, I guess, of the tracker, where does that come into play the most, in your experience? What type of sites are you talking about?
• 25:11
  Eric Goodwin: Yeah, so with our baseline design, and I think this is thing, something we're starting to talk a little bit more about, because it's pretty important, is the ability to follow terrain. You know, we know a lot of the sites that we are doing, especially a lot of the DG type sites, whether it's in the Northeast or other areas, are on sites that usually, in the past years, you'd see a lot of grading, or you just don't always have that opportunity.
• 25:37
  Eric Goodwin: And so we have the ability to handle a 15% north, south slope.
• 25:40
  Eric Goodwin: We've got a couple ways we do that with the design part of the bearing of torque tube design.
• 25:48
  Eric Goodwin: We make our own torque tubes, as I said earlier, and we have a little bit of flex in the torque tube that's able to kind of accommodate some terrain following. We also have a algorithm through our controls that kind of ties into the torque tube bearing interface.
• 26:02
  Eric Goodwin: That's a balanced tracker that allows us to, we normally kind of go back a little bit, not even noticeable, and then move forward. And it's a little bit different. It puts a little bit less pressure on the motor. And then the the other way we handle depression and slope is we use different power reveal heights.
• 26:21
  Eric Goodwin: So on some sites, we may have two or three different lengths of piles that still keep the tracker at the same base, and be able to install the product to handle some of that slope. And then we have a pretty simple way of color coding piles, putting a map, having shipments aligned to the map, so the installers. US and lay out the map and see exactly where, you know what piles go where. We also have a field service team that, many times, is out on site for a few days as needed, especially at the start of projects when we need to, you know, maybe walk through training or or look at what we call the golden row. I think everybody kind of uses that word, but getting your first couple tracker lines, built your rows, built making sure there's repeatability, answering questions. And so we have a team that's able to get out to the field, and that's part of our offering. We don't, we don't tap that on as a as a additional cost.
• 27:18
  Tim Montague: Very good, very good. So I'd love to talk a little more about the these two markets, the DG market, which we would typically call the the 10 megawatt and down depends on who you are. Some developers would say 50 megawatts and down is the DG market. And then there's the utility market, the 100 plus megawatt market. But do you see any significant changes in either of those markets in the foreseeable future? Yeah,
• 27:49
  Eric Goodwin: I mean, I think that the DG, I mean, it's going to be very the DG market for us is very state dependent. You know what? We've seen some really good policy and some growth. Obviously, Illinois is pretty big. You're seeing a lot of stuff that's happening in the northeast New York. I was at a rev 24 conference a few weeks ago in Vermont, and although they're a very small state, they have they're really doing an amazing job at trying to get to some very aggressive energy goals. And, you know, the DG, and whether you put community solar in there, you know, for different pockets is a big part of that. So, you know, I think as we look at a new administration, I think that state policy, you're still going to have an opportunity to have the states, hopefully control a lot of their destiny there. So I think the DG market will probably slightly grow over the next year or two. But you know, I think that with the continued improvements in battery storage.
• 28:44
  Eric Goodwin: You know, you're going to continue to see those two. I mean, if you're doing a project with solar and you don't have storage, I think it's more and more going to be the exception on the utility scale side, you know, there's, there's a very good cost proposition. When we look at where solar falls in versus other forms of energy.
• 29:01
  Eric Goodwin: Texas now is the largest state for solar, and there's still a lot of land, especially in areas like West Texas and other parts of the country where you can see a lot of utility scale solar.
• 29:14
  Eric Goodwin: Again, I think this next year, you know, I think, you know what, Mackenzie and the others, I think there's a kind of a flat trend, maybe with slightly growth next year, but I do think in the next three to five years, you're going to continue to see a steady growth even, even with the fact that we'll be deploying probably a lot of other types of energies, whether it's drilling, whether it's fracking. And I think one of the challenges that we all face. And what I think you'll see from an innovation standpoint, and you are seeing it, by the way, in addition to just every year, you have panels with higher efficiency, and all the stuff we're doing technology wise is, how do we use automation? How do we look at, I mean, there's companies, a lot of companies, that are looking at automated install. There's a labor shortage in a lot of ways in our country, and a lot across many industries. And so, you know, one thing I'm going to plug Dean salon from create is he we told Joe farne and I were on a panel last week at the Tennessee show, and and Joe told the story. And you know, how do you look at things like pre attaching a torque tube to a module, bringing it as one set.
• 30:25
  Eric Goodwin: I mean, there's going to be a lot of things to try to take labor out, because there may not be as much labor available, especially if more people are out doing other things in oil fields and others. But how do you design a plant? How do you design install with with needing less people. Obviously there's a safety aspect. And how do you design it for the young person in this country that probably is more interested in an Xbox or writing code or doing things that are maybe not so much hands on and and I think the analogy that Dean made is, like, I've got to design this so, you know, the kid that's in his basement playing Xbox can be able to do this and be able to contribute to the workforce in a way that just just really takes it, takes a lot of the same principles that that I know in Dean's case, that he's thinking from automotive years ago, before he got into solar. And can I spend a little bit of time in that space. How do you take out waste? How do you drive lean manufacturing principles? And so I think you're going to see a continued focus on that, how projects are built, whether it's automation, whether it's robots, whether it's more pre assembled.
• 31:36
  Eric Goodwin: There's a lot of emphasis on that, I think, across all of our contemporaries as well. I.
• 31:42
  Tim Montague: Yeah. So let's talk about this partnership with create, as you call it, energy.
• 31:46
  Tim Montague: Their their website is recreate dot solar, very interesting company and very famous founder and Dean Solan. So tell us about your work with them.
• 32:03
  Eric Goodwin: Yeah, no, it's super exciting. I know, you know, Dean's one of the pioneers and trailblazers in our industry, from founding shoals back in the 90s and and, you know, I think everybody knows the story of the success they had and bringing that company to to public. And, you know, over the last two years, Dean now is embarking on what his next adventure is. And with create energy, he's been able to, you know, create a skin of kind of the parent where, you know, the ultimate goal is to be able to drive as much domestic manufacturing as possible. And the goal is also to be able to bring as much of a power plant, possibly a whole power plant, together, to a developer, to a customer under one purchase order. And so, in parallel, the Create Group has done a few things. They've over the last year, they've made some acquisitions, acquired a transformer company, is switch character company and EPC. They announced that inner solar and Munich the partnership with Module supplier in Europe, recom, recom and create have a partnership joint venture to make product in the US under the the brand recreate. And that's where kind of recreate comes from. So that's going to be happening in the US. There's a longer term plan to be able to make sales. Dean is purchased about a 300,000 square foot, maybe a little bit off on the size manufacturing facility in his home of Portland, Tennessee.
• 33:38
  Eric Goodwin: And in that that is continuing to scale and where we had the opportunity. And, you know, my relationship with with Dean goes back to our first solar days.
• 33:50
  Eric Goodwin: Lot of things in common. There's a lot of common threads from what we do, from a from a US manufacturing standpoint, and what Dean's always been passionate about. And so we're really honored and excited to be able to, you know, be a source to provide our tracker, our fixed tilt is part of the the offering, if you will, for for future projects. And so, you know, we, you know, I've already taken a lot of steps around, you know, how we're going to continue to scale. There's still a lot of work to be done. But, you know, it's, it's very exciting time, and you know, we're just really happy to be a part of it.
• 34:29
  Tim Montague: So the recreate is, I mean, their, their first foray is to release a solar panel in the US market, a US made solar panel, right? Yes.
• 34:40
  Tim Montague: And then you guys are co branding, co promoting. Is that the gist of the partnership?
• 34:50
  Tim Montague: Yeah, so
• 34:51
  Eric Goodwin: it's a little bit probably a little bit different.
• 34:53
  Eric Goodwin: It's a white glove approach.
• 34:53
  Eric Goodwin: We're going to provide our product directly, but it's still whether you want to say powered by onco. It's still known as our tracker, we will, and we have designed, optimized a module mount, designed to this module.
• 35:10
  Eric Goodwin: We've done a ton of testing, so we've optimized, you know, our mounting on our tracker and some of the features. And so there's some other stuff that we're looking at, from a innovation roadmap that are very early to be able to talk about but, but initially, you know our offering is going to have some design and design optimization around their panel. But, yeah, it's basically a white glove, but it's a white glove where, you know we're talking openly about our product. I don't know if that makes sense.
• 35:44
  Tim Montague: Yep, I get it in our last few minutes together.
• 35:49
  Tim Montague: You know, we are putting together a webinar with omco and a company called Sun stall that are mechanical installer. Can you give our listeners a little bit of a teaser about what they might expect with our discussion with with with sun stall Helga beer, not is the CEO there?
• 36:07
  Eric Goodwin: Yes, absolutely.
• 36:07
  Eric Goodwin: Tim, I appreciate the opportunity to talk through that we're kind of finalizing, kind of what we want to present. As far as you know, partnership that we've had with, with Helga and the sun stall team. When we started years ago, around 2018 with our own products. They were one of the first installers that we started working with. And so we've had a great growth and relationship over many years.
• 36:31
  Eric Goodwin: And so where the focus of our webinar is targeting at is in this is based off our experience in the past, and now is, how do we handle the. Changes in the projects. How do we handle short term things that happen, whether it's everything from supply chain issues to ground conditions to you can do a geotech and pile test to site, and still, you have areas that it's not a perfect science, right? And so we've got some examples of how our teams have worked together to bring some solutions to customers, and to be able to kind of stop on a dime, if you will, and and make changes. We've had projects where the customers made a module change during the middle of the install. And, you know, how do we, how do we handle that with minimal impact and minimal change order. So we've got some some good examples. And you know, I think it'll be a really good opportunity for us to show you know, how you leverage partnerships, how you work together to bring value for customers. I think our industry is doing some great things in that space. I read about it every day. And you know, Tim, you and I see each other a few times a year conferences, and we there's a lot of collaboration, and sometimes across cross competitor lines and and if it makes sense in those cases, you know, I think this industry is is done well at that. I mean, as much growth as we have to get, it's a unique competitive situation, because we all have to do some amazing things. But looking forward to to presenting that with the sun stall team, and hopefully being able to, you know, address some really good, real life problems, if you will,
• 38:12
  Tim Montague: excellent. Well, check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Please give us a rating and a review. You can check out all of our events at the Events tab and reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from my listeners with that. Eric, how can our listeners find you? Yes,
• 38:30
  Eric Goodwin: definitely. Our website is omcosolar.com, and we also have, obviously, a LinkedIn page. And you know, we're pretty active there, but, but you know that that's our main website, and we're also usually, our team is been very active in a lot of the trade shows that we're having, we obviously had a big, big presence at already, plus we'll do so again next year. But and then, you know, I think the website's probably the best, best way, but we're easy to easy to find and quick to respond.
• 39:07
  Tim Montague: Perfect. I want to thank Eric Goodwin, Vice President of Business Development with omco solar, for coming on the show today. I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar.
• 39:16
  Tim Montague: Thanks, Eric. All
• 39:17
  Eric Goodwin: right. Thanks, Tim. Really appreciate it.