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The Global Team Strategy That's SLASHING Solar Project Costs · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Daniel-Dus: Rate, we estimate that our 140 person team is executing as much workflow as a, as a as a five to 600 person team would have just to just a couple of years ago because of the quality of the internal external software tools we have internal masters level artificial intelligence, full stack developer software folks who are building custom tools.
• 1:11
  Daniel-Dus: Have built custom AI automation tools to accelerate from site vetting and analysis through interconnection, procurement, through operations and maintenance, and so there is no point of our workflows that has not been touched by automation.
• 1:27
  Daniel-Dus: Are
• 1:27
  intro: 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.
• 1:38
  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
• 1:53
  Tim Montague: today on the Clean Power Hour, development as a service, construction as a service. My guest today is Daniel Dus. He is the CEO and founder of a company called clean tech industry resources, which you may or may not have heard of, but check them out.
• 2:07
  Tim Montague: Clean tech industry resources.
• 2:10
  Tim Montague: He's also the founder of Fight Night, solar Fight Night at RE+, welcome to the show. Daniel
• 2:16
  Daniel-Dus: Tim, thank you for having me and for doing what you do, which right now is more important than ever, storytelling, getting the word out, getting the message out. So thank you so much.
• 2:28
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it's really my pleasure. I get to meet so many interesting people like yourself, and I've been doing this for a decade now, and am only leaning in. And it's a great time to be in clean energy, despite the ups and downs, as we were talking a little bit in the pre show, we're going to get into what sir is, and a little background on solar Fight Night and some history on yourself, but maybe we should just put a pin in where we are in the industry.
• 2:58
  Tim Montague: You know, here in September of 2025 you know, the O triple B is kind of kicking our butt, and many people have nerves about that. But I like to say to my listeners, hang in, double down on solar and batteries, and you'll be okay. But what do you tell people about the state of affairs in the US solar market?
• 3:23
  Daniel-Dus: Yeah, it's it is a tricky question these days, with the gap between the rhetoric and what we're actually seeing in power markets, which is unprecedented demand. That's a it's a very, very wide gap. Even direct messaging is varying from the administration. So it's it's a tricky time. We have roughly 150 clients now across development, construction and industry focused financers, so we've gotten a very interesting look into how they're perceiving the current market. And there's a third of folks that are under capitalized and they're panicking and it's it's a massive challenge to have any delays in projects, whether it's due to tariff issues and the need to get those resolved, access to tax equity or development capital. And so there's a lot of that, that panic and fear and and folks trying to essentially salvage value from portfolios that they've been working on. There's a third of folks that we feel are in kind of a bit of a wait and see period. They're focused on their late stage construction assets, getting those into construction and moving those forward to comply with the OB, BBA. And then there's about a third of folks, Tim, who are game on all systems go. They are, tend to be well capitalized, and I don't know how else to put it, other than they see this as a discount shopping opportunity. They're bullish on the long term market.
• 5:03
  Daniel-Dus: They're bullish on the technologies, and they're they're out shopping for deals, and they're doing so aggressively with a lot of capital behind them, and we feel that they have the right perspective on the market right now, the macro trends are all extremely supportive as you know, the technology trends, cost reduction trends, we certainly see this as a blip in our ongoing march To inevitable success in dominating grid power and generation. So I think I agree with your sentiment. Stick in there. Hang in there. We continue, I continue to encourage folks to join the industry. But we are seeing quite a bit of pain, quite a bit of pain, which is sad for the industry.
• 5:48
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it's it's uncomfortable, for sure. Sure I've not been through as big a downturn in the industry. I got into the industry in 2016 but you know, we have to remember, there is this thing called the earth, right? We're only 5% of the population of the earth here in the US, and we are a big economy and a big innovator, and we're important, but there is this thing that is much larger than us. And I'm not suggesting that you have to lean into international work, but just look at international trends.
• 6:21
  Tim Montague: Right? The energy transition is happening full steam globally.
• 6:25
  Tim Montague: 80% of new power on the grid globally is solar, wind and batteries, and we're going to a grid that is going to be, you know, 90% clean by 2050 globally. But, you know, we're going to have a downturn. We're going to have a consolidation.
• 6:42
  Tim Montague: You have to be smart about this.
• 6:45
  Tim Montague: I wouldn't say it's a great time to lean into residential solar, and I don't know if we could just break out resi CNI and utility solar in the US. How do you and Sir See the US market at this time,
• 7:01
  Daniel-Dus: and we are serving all those market segments, and we're still bullish on on all of them, actually, on the macro trend scale, in residential Of course, there's just a mad rush right now to hit end of year tax credit value. Very sad, of course, to see the direct credits going away at the end of the year seems like upside down world where the third party financers get to keep their credits and direct homeowners do not. But it's an opportunity for the industry to reflect on the means and methods that they've been deploying, which have not always been the most ethical in direct sales, pressure cooker sales scenarios, and rather than working on behalf of homeowners as a trusted advisor, right? And being transparent, open book.
• 7:56
  Daniel-Dus: You know, 30% sales commissions on residential projects should not be a standard, right? And those will go away. Yep, the market itself, I have 10 kilowatts on my roof. It's the best investment I've ever made in my home, full stop. End of discussion. Near zero utility bill, right? We're including charging my Tesla like it's, it's, it's a phenomenal investment. And I'm in Vermont, not exactly the highest radiation in the country. These are phenomenal investments, but I installed for $2.20
• 8:28
  Tim Montague: a watt and and let's just, let's just remind everyone that you know, as energy prices go up, the investment in solar and batteries gets better and better. So we are in an inflationary period. Demand growth is tremendous, and that is driving prices up. It is ironic, because while the federal administration is trying to push down on solar, wind and batteries, which are the cheapest sources of grid power.
• 8:52
  Tim Montague: There is an explosion in grid demand, and the question remains, how is the grid and the grid operators going to meet that demand? And that's where we should also bring in this conversation around CNI, maybe Mike, maybe you could make a comment about micro grids and then utility
• 9:14
  Daniel-Dus: Yeah, so CNI seems to be marching forward and accelerating as more folks realize that power pricing, I think the average power rate was up 7% in the month of August alone, right, which is is An enormous average increase at the national level, so that that is a strong indicator of what's to come, given the discrepancy between new added generation pipeline backlog and load demand. So we'll see a lot more behind the meter. CNI, like you said, economics are only going to improve. In fact, we've got a very nice roadway there through 2027 so we're, we're doing 1000s of CNI locations nationally. The utility segment is in a mad rush, of course, to start construction on assets right now, I would say the longer term perspective is also strong. It's kind of that mid term, mid phase where we'll see credits decline, and there'll be a transition, transition period where folks will push very hard on cost reduction to make projects pencil without tax credits, which, given a likely 2025, potentially 30% plus increase in power rates on a go forward basis, is is is going to happen.
• 10:32
  Daniel-Dus: So there's still strong activity and utility. It is largely in our pipelines that we see focused on getting things into construction and safe harbored.
• 10:40
  Daniel-Dus: And so the micro grid market, we're spending a ton of time, especially around data centers.
• 10:48
  Daniel-Dus: So we're developing. Multiple gigawatt scale micro grids, technically, where there's either zero grid access or limited grid access. So imagine gigawatt plus solar, gigawatt hour plus of battery storage combined with some element of LNG behind, essentially behind the meter, with maybe only one to 500 megawatts of grid access in order to accelerate time to compute. So we're working on on that. We're working on multiple national portfolios for distributed data center deployment, including the establishment of micro grids. So imagine a system that's only eight years old. Modules were probably specced and manufactured 910, years ago, module efficiencies doubled since then, right? So you can repower these systems at modules, especially a non Fiat compliant might be 15 to 17 cents, DDP, you can repower these systems double the production capacity, maintain the current interconnection, use the rest of that power behind the meter to power one, 520, megawatt data centers, Bitcoin mining, operation, manufacturing or other other loads. So there's a massive repowering opportunity in the market already that we see
• 12:04
  Tim Montague: burgeoning. So when you when you say distributed data centers, what do you mean?
• 12:08
  Daniel-Dus: One to five megawatt containers on sites behind or in or in front of the meter, depending on utility h, j requirements and and so that's a real opportunity. Now multiple cloud compute companies already have agreements in place with hyperscalers to deploy at the gigawatt scale on a distributed basis.
• 12:30
  Tim Montague: So one to five megawatt, huh?
• 12:33
  Daniel-Dus: Yeah, maybe 10 or 20, but we see a lot in the three to five megawatt range that will pencil really well. So
• 12:42
  Tim Montague: this, this kind of resonates with what Peter Kelly Detwiler has coined as the fractal grid, where we see these projects at all different scales. This includes the generation and then the load centers, like these data centers, right? They happen at at the build, at the building rooftop level. They're happening at the Community Solar level.
• 13:02
  Tim Montague: And then the might the community scale micro grid, and then these very large projects, which are now gigawatt scale micro grids to accelerate the development, right? You're, if you're a developer of a large asset, like a gigawatt up to some of these projects are 10 gigawatts. Now that's millions of square foot a feet of data center. It's crazy how big some of these places are. They're like cities and but you can't get interconnection very quickly, right? Because the grid operator is going, yeah, maybe it's going to take us five years to analyze that. And so you're going, Okay, I'm going to prop up an off grid data center with solar, wind, batteries and natural gas and and then you get, you get online, and that's really there is this race to compute right now. It's all about that right now, and because if you don't get enough compute installed, there's no way for you to maintain your your standing in the horse race.
• 14:03
  Tim Montague: And you know, I was listening to a pod this morning about this, and there are, you know, four or five major players now in that space, but there's not going to be four or five winners in that space, right? There's going to be one or two winners in that space. And so the race is on.
• 14:16
  Tim Montague: And you saw the Nvidia, 100 billion dollar investment right in open AI, that is a lot of money.
• 14:26
  Daniel-Dus: It is, and a significant portion of it is targeting power. This is, this is why I'm headed to Silicon Valley in two weeks. Tim, to sit down with hyperscaler partners and clients and push these projects forward. And to your point, in in multiple cases, we are designing these systems to get to 100% off grid situation scenario solution today, but we're designing and placing the substations to interconnect as the utilities are able to get there too in the future, improve economics, improve resiliency and and so you know that is definitely part, a big part of what we're doing. We'll assess the grid as if we are the utility or balancing authority, and figure out where those opportunities for interconnection lie, not just today, but three, five plus years down the road, and design systems accordingly to integrate into the grid as the grid is able to build up and meet the need and the moment. But in the meantime, there's no time to waste. We are rapidly accelerating issued for construction ready permit sets, engineering sets for these projects now. So it's it's just a again, there's this disconnect between the rhetoric and then what we're actually seeing in terms of demand. Demand and activity in the marketplace.
• 15:53
  Tim Montague: Now, when you look back at the last five years of SIRs work, this development as a service platform that you've built, how has the relative influence of different industries changed and and, you know, I'm very curious about this explosion of data centers.
• 16:07
  Tim Montague: Obviously, you've, you've seen this as well, but tell us a little bit about that story.
• 16:14
  Daniel-Dus: Yeah, and our team had built upwards of 240 megawatts for for meta, previously, data centers going back over five, six years. So the demand has been there. Of course, it's accelerated dramatically. We are doing a tremendous amount. I mean, if you fly into LAX, right? We all, as industry professionals, we drool over all the empty rooftops. We see that we do empty today and and they need to be filled with panels, right?
• 16:43
  Daniel-Dus: Like we could solve a tremendous amount of grid resilience and generation, lack of generation, just through rooftop solar as we increase adoption. And what CIR is focused on is lowering the barriers to entry, lowering all the soft costs, and accelerating the deliverables so that we can get projects through permitting to bankability and into construction faster at lower cost. And of course, that just means more projects will hit return requirements and get built. And so that's our focus.
• 17:15
  Daniel-Dus: That's why we've commoditized energy project development, including all engineering services, for the first time. So by commoditized, I mean fixed, low rates that apply anywhere USA. So we're the only organization that we know of on planet Earth, where we can tell you immediately how much we charge for a two megawatt rooftop project in New Jersey or a gigawatt hour battery in Texas or France. Doesn't matter. We can give you the pricing immediately to eliminate all of that back and forth, all transfer all that risk to us as the professional service provider to execute and perform.
• 17:49
  Daniel-Dus: And that just makes investment decisions so much easier. And this is why we're working for four of the five largest private equity fund solar platforms. Is because we take the risk of performance within the commoditized model, right fixed price, fixed scope, straight into execution, and our scope includes compliance with all the HJ utility requirements. That's that that should, I think, always be on the professional service provider. So by doing that, we are accelerating projects and portfolios, because, for example, there's no bid time, so you save two or three weeks in just the bid process alone. And if we're cutting costs by half, that means twice as many projects can get through all those engineering and permitting deliverables on this for the same development spend. And that's really what we pride ourselves in. We love it when we see projects that come to us that don't pencil and we're able to reduce the cost basis through our procurement process, through our low cost engineering, development, services approach, and then see them hit Return hurdles and get financed, right?
• 18:56
  Daniel-Dus: That's like, that's what excites our team the most. So it's certainly, I think, what I like to say is we're in the right place at the wrong time. What we hate is when teams get downsized. Our client teams get downsized, and then we have to do more to help support them.
• 19:10
  Daniel-Dus: That's the type of industry pain that we're seeing that we really dislike. We like it when we're able to help turn engineering teams, one engineer, into the impact of 20 engineers overnight, right? That's that's what we love.
• 19:26
  Tim Montague: Well, that's a good segue to to talk about sir.
• 19:30
  Tim Montague: Why did you create, sir, and give us a little bit of that backstory?
• 19:36
  Daniel-Dus: Yeah, of course. So going back, I joined the industry 2006 and seven, and the first large platform that I helped build was called martyr for solar. It was a division of a top 10 global player at the time, based in Portugal, Europe was far ahead of the United States at the time, and we built the number one service solar services provider in Colorado, Massachusetts, Southern California, sort of Oh, eight to 12. And we built a large internal team of turnkey engineering, legal operations, construction, Master electricians. We internalized everything, and that was great through the cash grant days, Tim like fantastic, worked really well. We were learning a lot. We made plenty of mistakes back then, because you couldn't hire project managers that had executed the largest public schools projects in the country, like we did for Jefferson County, Colorado, 30 schools simultaneous execution. No. PM, had ever done that, so we had to figure it out, and we made plenty of mistakes, but when the cash grant days started to wane and we had massive internal SG and a but the project pipeline started to get thinner, we immediately ran into pain and trouble, because project work is lumpy and will always be lumpy.
• 20:46
  Daniel-Dus: You're waiting for tariffs to resolve. You're waiting for financial closing. Approvals, whatever it might be if you're carrying your maximum bandwidth need, and then you're in those valleys, it gets painful very quickly, and then you have to start pricing that into future deals, by the way, and you become uncompetitive. So that's where we've seen a lot of companies fail, including Marta for back then I had left, but they dissolve, were sold to baywatt a year and a half later, and now, by comparison, our clients, they can staff to their core, strategic internal need and then use us for all that added bandwidth needs. So many of our clients can do everything we do internally, sure, but they can only do it for so much capacity, and then they can use us for additional need, and then other clients, they may be coming out of a construction background, but they lack the finance and legal expertise which we can provide, or they're coming out of finance, but they they lack the construction background, and we can provide that cost estimation, procurement and execution experience to them, so we diversify their team capabilities without them having to internalize all these complex skills. So we're solving that core, fundamental challenge of project work is lumpy, so don't hire up a sgna That isn't flexible, right? Like that's that's core to the to the model.
• 22:09
  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 10 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. Yeah, I love this that you that clean tech industry resources allows companies to take on more work than they would necessarily feel comfortable with if they're let's say there are boots on the ground construction company.
• 23:12
  Tim Montague: Construction Company, and they want to expand into other markets, but they don't have an office. They don't have staff there, sir, literally would allow you to procure projects, start developing projects, and then execute them with the assistance of Sir or vice versa, if you're a developer and you're looking for resources in other markets. So up and down, and there's going to be lots of ups and downs. We call it the solar coaster for a very good reason.
• 23:45
  Tim Montague: It is up and down. We just came off a really high high. It was happy days. There was a lot of money flowing into solar, and now there's going to be less money. There's still going to be money flowing into solar, and it's going to be pickier. And, you know,
• 24:53
  Daniel-Dus: thinkability requirements have escalated pretty dramatically and consistently. Yeah. So whereas a project financing may have required 10% engineering, now they want to see 30s with a detailed bill of quantities.
• 25:05
  Daniel-Dus: They want to see those fixed EPC estimates in the data room. The data room requirements, the quality requirements for bankability have have increased.
• 25:10
  Daniel-Dus: No no question, insurance requirements. This is why we onboarded Richard Matsui to our board of advisors, who created the solar actuary table, moss table, that insurers used to underwrite these projects and and it's because those bankability requirements will continue to increase, and we as an industry need to bring ourselves up to those levels to execute, perform and continue to enjoy institutional finance or support.
• 25:40
  Tim Montague: So tell us about the experience that, let's say, an EPC, and in full disclosure, I'm an affiliate of CERs, so reach out to me if you want to learn more about CERF services.
• 25:52
  Tim Montague: But if you're an EPC and you're thinking, wow, yeah, I'd love to grab onto this community solar portfolio. But how on earth can I deliver that I don't have enough installers or electricians or project managers to run that work. Walk us through how you onboard an EPC and what are the gains that they benefit from.
• 26:12
  Daniel-Dus: Yeah, exactly. So the first thing is that I've never had any vendor in my professional life give me access to their own internal CRM. Never one time Has that ever happened.
• 26:25
  Daniel-Dus: We do that with every one of our clients so they can log in and see the exact status of every task that's been assigned to us.
• 26:33
  Daniel-Dus: They have a dedicated project manager who controls communication make sure we're on track and on schedule. They also have a dedicated email address that goes the to the entire assigned team. Team, but they can log in and see each task right? A task to helioscope.
• 26:45
  Daniel-Dus: This is when it's supposed to start and stop. You task us with a 3d engineering PV cyst bankable PV cyst model. Here's the schedule, and here's the assigned team member who's actually going to do that work.
• 26:59
  Daniel-Dus: And then our clients can inter interface and interact with them directly. Many of our clients have been in the industry for a long time. They're perfectly capable of interacting directly with the folks doing the work.
• 27:08
  Daniel-Dus: Instead of the traditional professional services model where you're assigned a POC, you they have to, if you ask them a question, go to an engineering manager who has to go to a specialized team leader who has to go to the folks doing that work and then back up the chain, you've lost three, four or five days just in the game of telephone there, right? By contrast, our team members can help guide our team. Our clients can help guide our team in real time. Interface with them directly. So that means a our clients onboard and ramp up very quickly, because there's no lag in the team structure and the team communication. And then we support EPCs from ground zero, from proposal development, open book, EPC estimations, CPM schedule creation, the entire bidding process with their clients digging into local labor rates, making sure they have the supporting data. We're running gigawatts of procurement processes, so we have current pricing for every nut, bolt, inch of conduit, wire, major equipment across the value chain, at all, any and all of it. We have had and run procurement processes to obtain that for our projects and our clients, so they get access to that DDP pricing database overnight, essentially, so that we can help support them in bidding those projects to your point. And then as you move forward into the process, we provide turnkey procurement execution support. We'll run global RFP processes for every single component, and then we'll do a side by side analysis for our UPC clients. Show them. This is the pricing from every one of the vendors. Here are the pros and cons and issues. Here are their qualification documents.
• 28:51
  Daniel-Dus: And then they can, they can choose which one they would like to proceed with, but they have real de risk DDP fixed offers with a specific timeline and and then we have a turnkey internal legal team that can arrange the MSAs they can get that product delivered to the job site. So, you know, really supporting the industry. That's what we're here for. I think we have a single corporate client because we were asked to to work with them by a leading private equity fund. But of our 150 clients, everyone is an industry insider, a developer, industry builder or financer. So we're here to provide the industry with the resources they need, but only as they need them, without those fixed price overheads.
• 29:38
  Tim Montague: Let's talk about two things. Let's talk about the tech stack, because this is obviously something that you've spent a lot of time developing, and then how you are manning these projects. You're a global operation, and this is, this is one of the ways that you provide a cost effective service. But tell us about the tech stack.
• 30:00
  Daniel-Dus: Yeah, we would not have been able to exist even three to five years ago in the form in the model that we do today. We leverage AI automation software tools every day. We have over 25 different enterprise level subscriptions to various software tools, and they range from early stage business development, Support and Contact generation tools like zoom info, where, again, if you're working in a specific city or county and state, you need to identify the provider, the local providers, if you want to be competitive drive your cost down. You need the local civil providers, right? You want the local electrical contractors. You want to get those folks into your procurement process. If you're just going out to all the national folks, you're not going to get the best numbers for that local project. You're not going to be able to engage the local economy and get those projects executed. So again, from zoom in photo, identify all those folks and RFP, all those folks, and get them into involved in the project. From Day Zero, we support and then all the way through, of course, we have helioscope, PV, sis, solar graph, PV, case PV, roof. We operate zendi, Homer, grid, you name it, if it's good, our internal AI automation team has vetted it, and we have expert operators internally. And that's how we accelerate. We estimate that our 140 person team is executing as much workflow as a, as a, as a five to 600 person team would have just to just a couple of years ago because of the quality of the internal external software tools we have internal masters level artificial intelligence, full stack developer software folks who are building custom tools have built custom AI automation tools to accelerate from. Site vetting and analysis, through interconnection, procurement, through operations and maintenance, and so there is no point of our workflows that has not been touched by automation.
• 31:55
  Tim Montague: Let's talk about AI and automation. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I'm now a WSI certified AI business consultant, and reach out to me if you want to get a quick assessment of where you are on this journey. Every company in America is going to be aI first in a couple of years, and you don't want to get left behind.
• 32:16
  Tim Montague: And that's really what I'm here for, is to help you get on that bicycle or rocket ship and ride that pony. So you hired, for example, a class of students from RIT Rochester, Institute of Technology's first ever masters of AI cohort tell us about AI and automation at sir, yeah,
• 32:35
  Daniel-Dus: exactly. So from the moment we look at any project opportunity at any phase it goes into our AI tools for assessment, because we want to make sure that nothing's been missed from the ground up. I can't tell you how many times we've stepped into supposed 30 or 60% engineering sets, and they had panels in wetlands or flood plains or easements or in setback areas, right? So we want to catch all those issues on ground zero, and we're constantly doing that, even at supposed late stage project development, and that's a terrible waste of time, effort, energy. It can create real issues in the interconnection process if you have to resize projects late in the development cycle. So every project that enters our processes goes through immediately, goes through tools that are GPT perplexity driven, and that is critical to ensuring our accuracy and acceleration. And those tools help us cut some of our workflows by as much as 80 or 90% so some workflows that used to take 5060, man hours now four or five or six man hours, and you aggregate that across now, I think we've touched over 8500 project sites. It's a lot of time saving and acceleration, and so that is utterly critical to what we do. We're still hiring a new team member every other business day on average. I think we've added a half dozen folks here in the US just this month alone, and it's because we you still need human humans in the loop for a whole slew of QA, QC review reasons. We need those experts in their field to ensure that last yard of quality and accuracy. These tools are fantastic, but they are not able to operate on their own and get to 100% accuracy. And so that's why we have qualified operators for for all these tools that come from the leading shops in the world, right? Global Head engineering X Black and Veatch, Global Head, civil ex burns McDonald, USP X burns McDonald.
• 34:41
  Daniel-Dus: Global Head, green hydrogen X TUV Rhineland, so global head estimation, ex Sterling, Wilson, really the best shops in the world, and we get them into a leading software environment that is tech to your point, AI and tech first, but really powered by the history expertise of a globally leading Team.
• 35:02
  Tim Montague: Very cool.
• 35:02
  Tim Montague: Anything else about the tech stack before we move on?
• 35:07
  Daniel-Dus: No, it's what is fascinating is when I was thinking through the workflows, to try to come up with an example of a workflow that is not software tech powered, and there are literally not any.
• 35:18
  Daniel-Dus: There are, there are none, procurement processes, AI, automated follow up, assessment, human resources, assessment of incoming resumes. It's, it is all tech enabled, right?
• 35:33
  Tim Montague: And you mentioned you're hiring a person a day, so you're, you're growing, and you're building a very international workforce. So talk about your background. This has been in your DNA, really, from day one, I think. But talk about that, and what are the benefits to your clients?
• 35:48
  Daniel-Dus: Yeah, so I'll never forget I read Tim Ferriss Four Hour Work Week, and he recommended a virtual assistant called Get Friday, who I signed up with, I want to say about 17 years ago and over time, and they're based in India, Hyderabad, and over time, I offloaded more and more of the redundant elements of my life to that team right. Started off with expense reports and little research projects, and at a few points, for example, one time, they saved me almost a million dollars in capex, I was getting ready to sign up for a large carport project, and they were sending me monthly commodity reports, which were compiled from a variety of sources. And went through the commodity report and realized that the price of steel had fallen 30 some odd percent since the last estimate refresh we'd gotten on the pricing. And since the vast majority of this procurement was going to be steel, I reached out, and sure enough, that we had got a dramatic reduction in that in that process. So there's, there's a tremendous amount of value by engaging a global workforce with a with a very diverse set of capabilities, skills, passions and professional goals and so now fast forward. Our team came together under a Donnie green energy when they had just finished their first ever solar project. In the span of four and a half years, I had the platform ranked as the largest global solar developer. I think they're headed to 52 gigawatts operating in construction solar assets.
• 37:21
  Daniel-Dus: They procured Softbank solar portfolio in Asia and and broke ground recently on a single 30 gigawatt project site. So that's how far ahead Asia is in deploying solar. We all know what China's doing. India is right behind them into playing Mega scale projects, much larger than exist in the United States.
• 37:42
  Daniel-Dus: So those are the projects that our team has executed. Our team has executed projects much, much larger than exist in the United States of America today. So they have industry leading expertise in Mega scale project deployment. And this is why we now have over 10 gigawatt, gigawatt hours of solar. Best projects in late in operation and late stage construction execution in our process is because our team has leading expertise in executing those projects globally. So we have 140 folks. We have three offices across India. We have a team that's a remote team across the United States, and an HQ in Vermont. And we really go deeply into obtaining the best talent, no matter where in the world they are.
• 38:25
  Daniel-Dus: Let's just put a pin in that figure. You mentioned a 30 gigawatt project, a big project in the US is like 1.5 gigawatts.
• 38:34
  Daniel-Dus: That's the largest solar projects getting developed in the US. So things are a little different in Asia, in China and India. And you know, it's we only need one to 2% of the landscape in the US to completely green the grid with solar and batteries. So we're not paving over the bread basket. Don't freak out if you're a landowner worried about this. And so we don't have much time left, Daniel, we should probably talk about Fight Night.
• 39:05
  Daniel-Dus: You've made a real mark with that fundraiser. What were the What's the origin story behind Fight Night, which is a big celebration and fundraiser at yeah, that's right. So the original Fight Night was 16 folks in a room just trying to figure out how to survive.
• 39:24
  Daniel-Dus: Really, there was no industry in 2007 eight. It was tiny. And I'll never forget, I signed up 100 kilowatt project with City of Santa Monica. And everyone in the room was like, Oh, my God, that's like, huge. Like, how are you ever going to get that built? And it was really, you know, CEO founders principles, introducing themselves and talking about their biggest challenge and then connecting folks in the room who could solve those challenges for each other, that was the primary goal, and talking about industry challenges and how to promote and push the industry forward.
• 40:00
  Daniel-Dus: We still do the same thing every Monday night at RE+ we get a team of CEOs, founders, principals, together to do the exact same thing. This year, we talked about the lies and misinformation that are so destructive to what we're doing, and how to push back and fight against those. And so the Fight Night event on Tuesday this year, we sold over 2000 I think 400 tickets. Broke our prior records, and we had an amazing set of performers. It's a celebration of the industry, and even now, we continue to break records and execute effectively nationwide. And it's a networking event to bring folks together to make sure they're exchanging business cards to help each other get projects done. So the core of Fight Night is still the same. It's a celebration. It's networking for success, and it's raising funds for nonprofits that are promoting our technologies. And so this year, we raised for folks like run on climate, who is promoting mayoral, hyper local county government candidates that are climate forward, making sure that they have the resources to succeed and get pro climate policy passed. Because project approvals happen at the local level. We support a footprint project who's deploying solar generators in disaster areas so that we don't have diesel Gen sets out there running, but we have folks have access to clean power. They're helping support cell tower networks in disaster areas so that first responders can be connected and be efficient. Really amazing organization, solar energy International, one of the.
• 41:39
  Daniel-Dus: Leading training organizations.
• 41:43
  Daniel-Dus: This is our second time supporting them, and we had a memorial for Johnny vice who was was a huge force for good in the industry, and so really a phenomenal set of nonprofits. I wish we raised 100 times more for these folks this year, we've RE+, also launched an anti misinformation campaign, so we have an analyst who's begun databasing all these lies and misinformation and responses to them. They're also databasing all the industry true stories from all of the local EPCs developers, so that we have videos from farmers that can tell the true story of what we're doing, saving farms, helping them get that new tractor, keep the farm in in the family for another generation.
• 42:25
  Daniel-Dus: Folks saying, like I just did, I put solar on my roof. Is the best investment I've made in myself, in my home. I don't know what all this rhetoric is, but it's been fantastic, right?
• 42:39
  Tim Montague: Where do we where do we find this information? We we
• 42:42
  Daniel-Dus: purchased clean tech. Fact check.org It's not launched yet, but we will post it there as well as on solar fight night.org. Which is where you can keep track of next year, we plan to do three or four events nationwide. So we'll be at InterSolar, we will be, of course, at Ari, plus we'll be at infocast as well. So we're going to expand our footprint. Aim to raise more funds so that we have more funds to contribute to this effort.
• 43:12
  Tim Montague: Hey guys, are you a residential solar installer doing light commercial but wanting to scale into large CNI solar? I'm Tim Montague. I've developed over 150 megawatts of commercial solar, and I've solved the problem that you're having you don't know what tools and technologies you need in order to successfully close 100 KW to megawatt scale projects.
• 43:37
  Tim Montague: I've developed a commercial solar accelerator to help installers exactly like you just go to cleanpowerhour.com click on strategy and book a call today. It's totally free with no obligation. Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate you listening to the pod, and I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Go to clean power hour and click strategy today. Thanks so much. That's awesome. We'll put the link in the show notes. Clean Tech fact check.org and solar fight night.org. I want to thank Daniel Dus for coming on the show. What a great conversation this has been, Daniel And please, if you're listening to the show, check out cleantechindustryresources.com.
• 44:22
  Tim Montague: That is Daniel's website. It's, it's an amazing, amazing resource. And you can just reach out to me on LinkedIn, and I can tell you more. Check out all of our content, of course, at cleanpowerhour.com Tell a friend about the show. That's probably the best thing you can do.
• 44:39
  Tim Montague: There's so many solar professionals do not know about the Clean Power Hour. So tell a friend that you're a listener.
• 44:44
  Tim Montague: And with that, Daniel, how can our listeners find you?
• 44:47
  Daniel-Dus: Yeah, please find me on LinkedIn, DM me. Would love to connect. As you mentioned, our website has a product page, and I always recommend folks to go there, because it's of how game changing it is. Any industry professional that scrolls through that product page and realizes that the entire procurement estimation process, at least around all the soft costs, has been fundamentally reimagined. Is it's it's a game changer, and it's hard to really understand until you see it. So highly recommend folks find us there too,
• 45:22
  Tim Montague: very well. Well, with that, I'll say thank you so much. Daniel Dus, CEO and founder of clean tech industry resources and founder of solar Fight Night. I'm Tim Montague.
• 45:33
  Tim Montague: Let's grow solar and storage.
• 45:33
  Tim Montague: Take care, everybody. You.