Latest / Clean Power Hour / Empowering a Greener Tomorrow: Inside CPS America's Success |EP 164

Transcript

Empowering a Greener Tomorrow: Inside CPS America's Success |EP 164 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:53
  Tim Montague: All right, well, here we are. We're at RT plus with CPS America. We're here with Brian Wagner, and Tom Patton and Zhehan Yi, the leadership team at CPS Malika, and we're gonna give you some highlights of what's going on at CPS. You know, I'd like to start with, what is your legacy and CNI. You have the number one market share position in North America for three phase three inverters? That's really incredible. Kudos to the theme.
• 1:19
  Tim Montague: And, you know, let's face it, solar is a very competitive sport. And you have to constantly be evolving the product. It's a very fast growing industry. So what are you proudest of? And what do you say to your installer and developer customers?
• 1:38
  Bryan Wagner: Sure. Yeah, I mean, well, being here already plus, and thank you, Tim, we appreciate that and appreciate you being here. You know, it already. Plus, one common theme we've had all week is that, you know, our team has really showed up again, and again, each and every meeting we've had each and every install we've been a part of. And I think that's what's driven our ability to stay top market share leader. So we've been number one market share leader in CNI, or three phase during the last seven or eight years, as you know. And for us, the way we do that is we have to reinvent ourselves every single year. And we're starting to do that right now for 2024 planning, where we're talking about how to disrupt ourselves, how do we disrupt ourselves, so we don't become number three next year? Number five next year. And so it's about really being fresh in the not only the team and the hiring, and the way are we call it our Lightspeed system works where one department works with another all the way through our business and our customers. But also how do we how do we make products and launches faster I had already plus this year, we've had three UL certifications fully announced. So we had the breaker box, which we think is a game changer for our 275 platform. And we can basically we just had a customer visit.
• 3:00
  Bryan Wagner: They have 300 megawatts of projects next year, all five megawatt projects, and we just brought their lead time in half, thanks to that product. So we can replace the switchgear now with the breaker box, go from the 270 fire to the breaker box, then to the fuse switch disconnect then to the transformer, and the transformer station that we're delivering.
• 3:19
  Bryan Wagner: We just turned on 105 megawatt project, we can now deliver that all in 24 weeks. So the breaker box, the inverter, the fuse, switch, disconnect are all in stock, four to six week lead time, and then the transformer comes last. And they just told us that their current source they're buying from is about 26 to 40 weeks on just to switch gear. So we now know that we can cut their construction time in half, which means it can build twice as many projects in 2024.
• 3:46
  Bryan Wagner: So that's really, I think, why we've been so successful, is speeding up everything we do.
• 3:55
  Bryan Wagner: It's all about speed and execution here at CBS. And with our leadership team. We couldn't be more proud of our way we perform this week. We were supposed to get you ELLs in November and December. And we were surprised our r&d team is also moving very fast overseas.
• 4:08
  Bryan Wagner: And in the US are planning we do product development together as a team, two other products got UL, the 350 kilowatt, and the five megawatt hour battery container, which all three of those products are truly Game Changer products for not just CPS, but really for the whole industry. And, you know, we couldn't be more excited for the rest of our team and our future team that are coming to CPS.
• 4:34
  Tim Montague: Yeah, you know, we had breakfast the other day with some of your customers. And the conversations going on with these developers that are doing, you know, five to 150 megawatt plus projects, and considering using the 350. Now displacing central inverters. That was a really exciting conversation, I have to say, so what about you Zhehan? And Anton? What's what's top of mind for you guys?
• 5:01
  Anton Patton: Yeah, I mean, like you said, the 275 kW, and our new 350 Kw that we're launching, really, these high power string, inverter products and technology is really making an impact on bringing strength to these large scale utility projects. And like Brian said, you know, our 800 volt breaker box and other 800 volt rated equipment that we're now bringing to the market really enables customers and developers to use these high power string inverters at 800 volt because that's a big need that we saw there wasn't a lot of product availability, and equipment at 800 volt. So that now now that we have this whole solution that we're bringing from the inverter, the balanced system and up to the medium voltage For transformers, it's really exciting to have such a such a wide product line
• 5:58
  Tim Montague: cutting the delivery time in half. I mean, that really is the bottom dollar for the developer, right. And the asset owner, getting more projects built in less time means that they can develop more projects ultimately, right and grow their businesses faster.
• 6:09
  Tim Montague: And so it's it's game on, what about you Zhehan? I mean, the five megawatt hour battery, oh, mg, what an awesome solution.
• 6:17
  Tim Montague: And you know, as as penetration of solar goes up in markets, like California and Texas, right, where we've gotten now 30 40% of grid power coming from solar in the coming years. So storage is going to be attached to not just some but every solar project, right storage is becoming a vital pairing. And then, of course, standalone storage in markets, like ERCOT are very popular. Also, what conversations have you been having that you're excited to share
• 6:49
  Zhehan Yi: those stories, everybody is talking about stories, he would walk around the showroom was the loves of storage products. And I can say, storage is not new tours, we've actually deployed gigawatt hours globally. And we're bringing this one, this is the actually is the highest density product in a 20 V container, we're talking about five megawatt hour inside the container. And it's a liquid cooled. So we have some innovations over there, bringing the intelligence in the cooling and the safety features to the battery. And we're not only providing a battery, we're actually providing a turnkey solution, including a five megawatt hour battery, and a 2.4 megawatt PCs ski. We're enabling the string control of the battery, like boring a concept from the string of the piece, PV inverter to the string PCs. So this is like you can use all the benefits from the string structure from a PVE are experiencing PvE.
• 7:47
  Tim Montague: I'm a little handicap, right? Because I haven't spent the last three days in your booth. Right? And let's get into what are the questions? What are the tough questions that customers are asking? And what are the challenges that you're able to overcome? I mean, I love this story. I love this theme of, you know, getting product into the field faster
• 8:09
  Bryan Wagner: on the theme of the you know, markets and moving construction at a faster pace through our product innovation.
• 8:17
  Bryan Wagner: We found that, in q2, the data came out, the commercial market was 330 megawatts, the utility market was 3.3 gigawatts. So that for us is a game changer.
• 8:27
  Bryan Wagner: As a company, we've been very scrappy for 10 years, and now entering a market that is that size. You know, of course, there's 500 megawatt projects, and a lot of them. But, you know, there's also a lot of 100 megawatt projects, 50 megawatt projects that make up that 3.3 gigawatts, just in q2, of 2023.
• 8:47
  Bryan Wagner: So we know, through our execution and our speed on product innovation, having the largest printer 50 kilowatt inverter in the market. Now again, we just did it again. And it doesn't D rate at 30 degrees C like some of our competitors will, or you know, the only other one that's even available in the market with UL does ours D rates of 45 degrees C so you'll deliver way more power, your power upper would be way higher. So we're excited about that the tough questions we usually get a lot of in the show is the problems you have out in the field. And how do we as a company, deal with those challenges and deal with those problems or those upset customers, rightfully so if you have problems, we tend to lean into our problems, and really face them head on, which is why and that could even be internal challenges that you have when you're building an organization that you have to face head on.
• 9:41
  Bryan Wagner: So it's internal, its external.
• 9:44
  Bryan Wagner: But as it relates to the field, no doubt we have the best service team in the business. We have the best engineering team, we have the best product team.
• 9:49
  Bryan Wagner: We have the best sales team, we have the best support teams, man, we feel strongly that way because we deliver one team to to address that problem. And we actually looked into it recently, first half of the year, we said okay, over the last 12 months, how do we really look in terms of data. And when we found was we had a 95% retention rate on repeat customers, which means we're doing pretty darn good on not walking away from challenges that are on the field. Every inverter We do ship will break.
• 10:21
  Bryan Wagner: So you kind of know, hey, this is what we're getting into when we when we ship our products.
• 10:25
  Bryan Wagner: It's an operational business.
• 10:29
  Bryan Wagner: It's not a transactional business.
• 10:31
  Tim Montague: What are you seeing in terms of solar plus storage? You know, there are certain markets where storage has more value than others like California with nem 3.0. Right.
• 10:41
  Tim Montague: Its attachment rates have gone from 20 to 70% in the California market, and then you have markets like Illinois where there's special incentives to her for the dollars for kWh Massachusetts, anything 500 kW, and has to have storage attached New York with their storage incentive program, paint us a picture what what what are they?
• 11:03
  Tim Montague: You know? And what are the customer conversations and and the and and the orders that you're seeing? Is it going to be a lot of these five megawatt hour projects? Or is it is it more see and I, where the where the real opportunity is in the in the near term,
• 11:19
  Bryan Wagner: I'll let these guys talk to that on the product or technical side. But in terms of our business, a market like Massachusetts, we haven't been in a long time, we were there early, we were probably number one market share for there for many years. But when this new 500 Kw cap came in, where we didn't have a product in storage, we were out. So it's very exciting to kind of get back into these markets at a much faster pace. And that will grow our business very, very quickly. So
• 11:49
  Anton Patton: most of the discussions, I mean, pretty much all of our customers are either, you know, installing solar plus storage now or looking at it for their their project pipelines of adding storage to the solar plants, because of the some some of the things you said the utility rates changing, you know, the value of storage and adding that both for, you know, reducing demand charges, but also adding resiliency and backup for those types of applications is huge. I mean, pretty much the whole industry, the whole show is talking about
• 12:20
  Tim Montague: that, you know, the I've been writing about grid scale storage lately, because of a partnership I've developed with Reuters and and you know, we've been talking about short medium long duration, of course, lithium iron phosphate is the leading technology now for stationary storage. And that's very much about the market and and how you create a value stack with a battery right. But why exactly did you develop a five megawatt hour product Why is that so important for the US market.
• 12:49
  Zhehan Yi: So, battery, the energy density like all of the battery manufacturers or the suppliers, they are struggling with the energy density and also for the customer and he likes it he means a lot because you have to you have to plan your layout, how to install your battery, for example, if you want a want to install a 10 megawatt system, think of megawatt hour system, if you have you know, a higher power density or energy density, for example, likers we packed all of the five mega our into one totally container content will compare to some of our competitors had only 2.5 or 2.7.
• 13:23
  Zhehan Yi: That means we can use two container to solve a fault current no problem, right? So half the footprint, save a lot of footprint, also laboring installations, shipping costs, shipping costs everything. Yeah, so that makes a lot and highly integrated into a 20 V container, you have the ease of the maintenance and also the control flexibility, it's everything. And the safety, everything, because iteration will be much, much better. And the system will just work much better as a whole.
• 13:55
  Tim Montague: So what else should EPCs and developers know if I'm an NPC, and I haven't been doing chint projects, let's say I've been working with a competitor of yours. And I'm experiencing pain points on supply chain or service or product failure. What is it that pushes me over the hump to come to cient?
• 14:19
  Anton Patton: If it's a new customer that we're working with? You know, definitely starting with looking at a project with our applications engineering team, we'll review okay, what type of projects are you working on what sort of the best design architecture for that with the products that we have. And then going through sort of all of the benefits, the advantages, with a lot of the key features that we have, and then going through, you know, working on a project with CPS with our team, both in the design phase, logistics ordering, and then our service team, you know, we really see as working with the EPCs and developers as as a partner for them for their projects throughout the lifetime of it.
• 15:06
  Anton Patton: So not just selling an inverter but being a partner for our customers, as they're designing, installing and operating these systems.
• 15:15
  Bryan Wagner: We have one project great now. We were working on maybe two years in terms of our customer developing last two years, and we've been working on all the technical last two years. So we have a meeting next week that we feel false sides feel we're ready to move ahead. And one of the main discussions this week was about how many jobs we're creating in this particular state construction jobs will be in the 1000s. It's a very large pipeline of many projects. Our jobs will be in, you know, probably in the 20s Obviously it started parties, it's multiple companies, but for the state's, for the local economic development authorities in these regions. This is the biggest benefit that we're, you know, creating, you know, we think, just so such good jobs here in America. And I think that's what makes us super proud is the hundreds of, you know, the 1000s of jobs we've created here in America, good paying construction jobs, hard working jobs, frankly, there's, you know, almost shortage now, in the construction side of solar, so that that's bringing a lot of other industries that are maybe struggling or not growing as fast as renewables is. And that's, you know, again, kind of fueling our economy as a whole.
• 17:30
  Bryan Wagner: And that's so exciting to be a part of this energy transition here in the US. And really, we're a global company. So even for us, we have global teammates, and we're part of a global transition. You know, and that's really cool.
• 17:45
  Tim Montague: Let's talk about how the company is growing, right? You're on a very fast growth trajectory yourselves.
• 17:51
  Tim Montague: You know, of course, of course, the end industry is growing. But we need to bring 10s of 1000s of more professionals into the clean energy transition. And change is very much part of that. Yeah. But tell us a little bit about if you're working in an adjacent industry, or in any competing company, what is it?
• 18:13
  Tim Montague: What is it that separates cin from other companies?
• 18:16
  Bryan Wagner: I think it's a good question you just brought up I don't know the exact numbers or data, maybe 10, or 20,000, jobs existed when I got in solar in 2008. Was early days Navy, now we're approaching 300,000, I've seen estimates show one 2 million jobs will be created in the coming years. We believe through our technology through our innovation through our team, and through our hire, that's how we'll move that transition faster and multiply.
• 18:39
  Bryan Wagner: You know, if we add one to three jobs, we believe there's a multiplying effect in the local economies, for construction jobs, good bank construction jobs, because there's such high demand. And, you know, there's, obviously, to move to renewables. It's complex, but it's a good economic model for most of the developers or most of the states and incentives out there. So for us this week, we just got 50, new hires, approved, new new rolls approved. So half will be in products, engineering, and service, and half will be in more like commercial commercial operations, some of our sales and those parts. So yeah, I mean, to add 50 jobs, in the next three months, there's a lot of work for all of us in leadership. And then for the next three years, those jobs, only training, some of them will be inside solar, some of them will be engineers from outside of solar, and we will deliver the best training we feel in the industry, to learn about all different facets of solar, you know, we don't really, maybe learn too much about how a farmer leases out the land, but we can get in those conversations and learn. And so you know, we can learn about that. And a lot of us have interest in that, you know, there's so many arrangements now and solar. So it's exciting.
• 20:00
  Tim Montague: So what is the what is it that you're looking for in these technical hires that you're making? For example, what kind of background are you looking for? Is it a W E, or some other background just paint a picture for us,
• 20:17
  Zhehan Yi: so any more engineers to support a customer, because we're seeing projects coming in a lot of projects, definitely want to provide the best support for our customer. So want to have the team ready for those projects? So mostly engineers and products
• 20:30
  Anton Patton: have? Yeah, I mean, we definitely have a wide range of roles that we're looking for. So yeah, on the product engineering side, definitely a technical background, ideally, with, you know, experience in the industry, but we're also looking to develop, you know, our, our team, you know, always looking for someone that's wanting to learn wanting to grow with us as a, you know, a team member on our, on our engineering team or other departments. So, and then, you know, the culture. So we were a close team, we're growing a ton, but we on the leadership side, have made sure to keep that kind of collaborative culture because that's what's led to our success. And keeping that so someone that, you know, is a good fit on our team that will work well with us, you know, as, as a lot of times more important than them.
• 21:22
  Tim Montague: And what you said about customer retention, I think really resonates. You know, it's it's one thing to come and work for a great technology company, right? Quite to work for a company that can retain its customers and grow that base over time is so gratifying and it really does lead to happier employees. I think when they see that Success, and the impact that you're making in the industry.
• 21:47
  Tim Montague: And and the turnover at cient is very, very low too. And, you know, in the solar industry, the average employees only staying to two and a half years. So, I think you're, you're trying to turn over a much, much less than, yeah, I
• 22:02
  Bryan Wagner: have to, you know, have a little data on that, as you can imagine, in my role. But I think, you know, a few years back, like a lot of companies that are going through transitions in leadership, we experienced some, you know, higher periods of turnover at that time. Since though probably last year and a half, we, I think we've lost two people, and we we actually tripled the size of the team in the last 1218 months. So we've grown to about 80 people now, in the US, you know, globally, we're much bigger, but in the US 80 people, and to lose two people, you know, do the percentage is it's record low, those two, that we lost one, one to retirement, the other one went back to work and an old job, and then we're still working together as partners, they're in a consulting engineering firm. So, you know, we, we take that one kind of person off. I mean, we say personal, you know, from, from our business standpoint, because we feel like we didn't get through their career path with us fast enough, we do look at this, we have all kinds of measured metrics we look at from leadership. But we think, you know, we're here in Vegas, right? Nobody wants to lose, when they bet, if they bet. But you know, we think our pan that we deal is, is about winning.
• 23:16
  Bryan Wagner: And, and, you know, by better the result is winning. But you really, I think the hand New Deal is more about confidence.
• 23:24
  Bryan Wagner: If we deliver the confidence to the employee, that you have a career here, you have a growth path here, you can start here, you can go to here next, and then go to there, and there is a end game for them. Personally, I think we spend the most time on that probably better than any company I've ever been at. And we as leadership, really work on this all the time. You know, not just the culture, but making sure that everyone is part of the winning, that then in their turn creates that confidence.
• 23:54
  Bryan Wagner: And when they have that confidence in anything you do, if you can get the confidence in yourself and your abilities, you know, you will come along for the ride as we're number one.
• 24:05
  Bryan Wagner: Our goal now is to take that to the next level. When we first you know, got part of the leadership, we had about a two to 3% overall inverter market share, we're in at the end of 22, we were approaching 8% market share total overall inverter. And even though we have three phase string, number one market share seven of eight years, we don't have the total number one market share. So our goal now is to become the total number one market share. And with a winning team, and everyone scoring touchdowns, or whatever analogy you want to use, it's about their career, it's about them as individuals about their own families. And we feel very in leadership, very fortunate that we have a great team, but very, in a very position of a very big responsibility to lean in, make sure that we're thinking of something they're thinking of, or thinking about, even if they're not talking about it. So we can create that winning culture that hey, maybe you're not in the best position right now. And let's pivot and get you in something where you'll sell more based on your background, your educational background, your execution, you know, we read a lot of books as a team.
• 25:14
  Bryan Wagner: And one of them, they talked about how you need to have 80% of the job that we need you to do, and 20% of the job that you want to do. We work a lot on that part and making sure that maybe even at times, you could be 5050 because you want to go do things, we let them go do things. And we got to make sure that we pay attention to that.
• 25:39
  Bryan Wagner: And we were getting better. And we have a ways to go. But I think we're probably leading in the space right now as well. We believe the fastest growing company both revenue and job growth. And I think we're very more most proud of the job growth part. And good, good paying jobs. Route Berlant.
• 25:57
  Bryan Wagner: Really exciting. Yeah.
• 25:59
  Tim Montague: One of the things that that is present for me is that you have, you know, offices in New Jersey, Texas and California. It's a big country.
• 26:07
  Tim Montague: How do you maintain a consistent culture and connectivity between those three disparate geographies?
• 26:16
  Bryan Wagner: Well, COVID helped. Because I think it created a if it was one thing, it helped to create a created a dynamic that allowed all companies to understand that hybrid productivity is real. And we feel like we have a certain way we do it in each office. We actually have two offices in California, northern and southern. So it's four offices that need to look, feel and operate the same way. But it's part of the leadership in those offices. So we actually look at them as market centers, and how do we engage in the market center? How do we create fun things to do in the market center, we actually do a lot of giving back and the local communities, we just adopted a road, for example, Minnesota, where CPS is on a sign and little things, then they then the teammates get together, they go execute these things together, take some time out of their workday to go have fun together. You know, we have many examples of that. But zoom has helped. We're a big zoom company. I mean, we use teams as well, maybe I'm not as big of a fan. But But each, each office has a different way they collaborate, I think, as we grow, you know, we will, I'd say at least double the size of the team again in the next 12 to 18 months. And as we do that, you have to have the technology, the tools, and the right leadership in place to adapt to whatever the latest is, as a company when COVID Hey, we were very fortunate that at that time, we already use Zoom for five years.
• 27:45
  Bryan Wagner: So we were like, execution time, we already know what to do. We already had offices in New Jersey, to in California, and in Texas set up, we're actually looking at a fifth Market Center right now, which is Midwest region. Yeah, I
• 28:01
  Anton Patton: mean, being spread out, you know, I think the open communication is key, you know, with with all of our team, and everyone is in our different departments making an impact and what we're doing, you know, we all touch projects, and support customers in different ways. And with the collaboration, you know, just having finding different ways to communicate with each other both digitally.
• 28:22
  Anton Patton: And then, you know, finding the opportunities and taking advantage of when we do get together really seeing how we can work best with each other being spread out. And then in our different offices, like the impact that we're all making, you know, now that we've shipped over seven gigawatts of inverters for the US market alone, it's really been exciting to be a really big part of that energy transition. And then, you know, building from that with all of the utility scale CNI products, we have energy storage.
• 28:55
  Tim Montague: And one of the things that I, you know, really like about cient, is that you have that Innovation Day in, in March in Texas, bringing your customers to your campus there, and spending a whole day with your customers and your employees. That's, that's a very unique thing. And a great opportunity to learn more about the technology, grow your relationships, you know, obviously, customers tend to have their one or two key relationships, but then you get to rub shoulders with other departments, you get to see the, you know, James's lab and, and behind the curtain how the company is really operating. I thought that was really fun.
• 29:37
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I
• 29:37
  Bryan Wagner: mean, we have two parts to CVS labs. So the first part is where James's team, you know, Tron and the team, that do such a good job for the service center, bringing products in and replacing, you know, upgrading products and things. But we also have the ideas and the product development side, which the second part of CPS labs that's really come alive the last few years. So this year, March 27, will be our third Product Innovation Day. And we're really excited. There's already customers coming to us saying when is it? And you know, making sure they're getting things lined up? We're excited, you know, today for 2024. You're saying, Yeah, it'll be March 27 2024. Awesome. Well, you
• 30:19
  Tim Montague: heard it here to mark your calendar, march 27.
• 30:24
  Tim Montague: Talk to Brian about getting an invitation to that event. You've been with the company a long time, you know, you've made a major impact on this company and vice versa. But what is CPS to you?
• 30:36
  Bryan Wagner: So CPS, to me is, I would say it's more of if you look at your I mean, we like data. So if you look at your data on a monthly basis, how much time you spend doing something. I don't know the exact percentage, but it's a very high percentage of my time is with CPS with CPS teammates.
• 30:56
  Bryan Wagner: We're together all week. I mean, it happens to be in Vegas, we had some fun, we like to have fun. We always use the expression winning is fun. And we think winning is contagious within the company. That part of our confidence where we're instilling confidence, it's contagious. And, you know, I think so is losing. So we don't really like to think about losing. I like to think about winning and making sure that we win and everything we do, we win, you know, what we say on and off the field. You know, meaning like inside of our different meetings inside of our different calls with r&d teams, make making sure we're all on the same page collaborating. And I think that through that you develop some really cool friendships, and some really Cool, you know, we know each other's families, we've gone, you know, today, I mean, we've gotten to dinners together. And we do that a lot as a team, actually. But even with families, you know, it's, it's become, I think that for us, and there's a few people that came by this week that actually we even had dinner with this week, that miss us, you know, and Miss really more of the team, part of being inside of that team. And inside of that culture, it's like any winning team. And we're obviously right now working on our eighth championship of nine years. Next year, we'll work and be working well, we think our ninth ring, however, use that analogy. And as you do that, it's very hard to win over and over and over again. And I think that's what CBS means. To me, it means, as you win more, you have more fun, you have more things in common, because through a lot of winning, you usually have a lot of losing. And so when you lose, you learn the most. And we never lose without saying, Okay, why did we lose? Let's take it back, figure out, you know, and then we usually laugh about why we lost and what we could have done different or which teammate, you know, as part of our Lightspeed system, do we need a little bit more training or coaching on on which point, and, you know, most of the time, if that's even one of us in leadership, which is common? You know, we'll feel like, Hey, that was on us. And we need to figure out how we improve ourselves as leaders.
• 33:14
  Anton Patton: Yeah, I mean, to add to that, you know, CPS, it's an amazing team, we work so well together. And I think it shows like someone looking at CPS, I think they can see, you know, it's, it's an amazing team to be on. And there's a huge amount of industry experience and knowledge on our team. And that, I think, is a lot of the value that we bring to the industry, you know, helping our our customers, solar and energy storage projects, seeing what the best solutions are we can bring to the market, and then helping with that transition of, you know, how do we best support? How do we improve and we are always improving, both as a team and with our products of how do we help advance technology help advance solar energy storage, here in the US,
• 34:06
  Tim Montague: and Zhehan? Please answer that question. Also, what is CPS to you but also if you can address what is this life?
• 34:14
  Tim Montague: Lightspeed system that
• 34:16
  Zhehan Yi: bring out that? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mentioned pretty new to the team compared to Anton and Brian, he's a veteran
• 34:24
  Bryan Wagner: now those year in Yeah, almost a year.
• 34:29
  Zhehan Yi: Yeah, thanks. Just joining end of last year. To me, CPS is really like, land formation is a team and I really like Lightspeed system that we're creating over here. This is nothing like I've never seen before, right? So we are like a global company. We have people here in the US, we have people there. In China, we have r&d team, big r&d team supporting us, multiple r&d centers, bizarrely manufacturer, manufacturers, you know, this system, you just spinning up the full thing, like when you need somebody, we always know where we need to reach out for it. And we can bring some of the, you know, the expertise, the basic expertise, we want to help with us in a projects, support customers, and they get the whole thing done. So that lab space season is really, I think it's one of the best I've ever in a task before. And then
• 35:20
  Tim Montague: is that a system that comes out of the the manufacturing side of the business.
• 35:24
  Bryan Wagner: So So Lightspeed was created actually was a name we voted on as a team. And it basically starts with you think about it on an org chart, like if you start with the left, and he say, okay, it starts with HR, because you have to have people starts with the people, then it could go to maybe the product team, because you got to create a product, it goes all the way until, say the inverter lights turn off, and you got to have the service team come in to turn them back on. That whole thing is a system. We used to have three departments product service sales, and now we have about 16 to 20 departments and each departments growing or investing in each department.
• 36:07
  Bryan Wagner: And really, a lot of times another book we read, it talks about the triangle offense, a lot of times me Zhehan and Anton will work together to move the ball to the next department, or I step out and they work with the next person move with that triangle to move the ball. And then what he's referring to is you kind of learned very quickly, yes, through the team.
• 36:30
  Bryan Wagner: It's like self policing. Where do I go for this? I'm like, Well, why are we talking about this like this is John's role or right and then you learn that very quickly, and people know Where to go seek help. Because in most companies, what happens is as you get to a certain size, you get too big, you get too slow, you get to too many approvals, we've actually gone the other way, where we say, get rid of that process, I actually a lot of times will intentionally be a bottleneck in the company. And so we hire someone to fill that void. And it might be very frustrating at times, till we fill the void.
• 37:07
  Bryan Wagner: And we fix the bottleneck problem, which is what we needed a whole nother one or two people to do that part of this speed up. And I think finally, after maybe a year and a half of really redesigning, you know, we've worked on it a long time, but redesigning as a, as a whole company. Now, we're seeing the benefits of this Lightspeed where we believe that the revenue will grow 10 times from today, in the next three to five years due to the speed in which we execute that that system.
• 37:37
  Tim Montague: I have one more question, when you think forward to a year from now, when we're here at our A plus next year.
• 37:43
  Tim Montague: What do you anticipate will be news for cin? Do you can you say anything about looking forward where r&d is going?
• 37:52
  Bryan Wagner: Another book we read, as a team, as a leadership team, talks about a whale product. So I will just leave it at that we are working on our whale product, which we believe will finally disrupt and display central for good. Because once you get a product, that is, you know, it's always about string versus Central, the little 100 pound box versus the 10,000 pound machine? Well, it has a lot less parts a lot. Like it's a lot less to service. It's got to be reliable, same reliability. So I think it's about for the developers, the EPCs, and the owners, it's about it, can you make that thing?
• 38:36
  Bryan Wagner: Reliable, and more cost effective than essential? And the answer will be yes, in both, both of those within the next 12 months, if not sooner. And then also, as we go up in product line with our well product that will come. We believe at that time. You know, you're displacing Central, because it's cheaper to go string. And the inflection point of when that occurs. Right now, it's about hair, like it's almost similar.
• 39:07
  Bryan Wagner: So and for many years, maybe three years ago was way more expensive, maybe 30%. More expensive. So now as it becomes cheaper, more cost effective to go string on any size project.
• 39:19
  Bryan Wagner: You know, I think you'll see that whole industry or our our industry disrupted for displacing Central. So the well, we'll leave it at that.
• 39:26
  Anton Patton: I mean, one thing I've found interesting at this show this year, versus say three or four years ago at Ra plus a lot of the discussions were out around, you know, what are the benefits? You know, why would I go string for these large PV projects? Whereas today, I think a lot of the industry understands those benefits. So now the discussions are more around. Okay, how am I going to use this string inverter for this 100 200 megawatt project and looking at the design configuration. So I think that trend is going to continue and for we're going to see a lot more of that.
• 39:58
  Bryan Wagner: I have one last story, if we don't mind. So we had someone come over this week and explain how they just joined a competitor. And I, old colleague, old friend, really, and we didn't know we were having to be running on a treadmill recently next to each other and hotel at a different event. And were they early morning and saying, you know, how's it going? I didn't know they were leaving the company, or else we would have probably said, Hey, come join us vote by they were like, Hey, we're gonna compete now. And we were laughing? And I actually said I I don't think so. And the reason I'll think so is we don't really compete with any company we do say maybe central for companies because that is the technology We're disrupting. It's about the disruption of the technology and, and how fast you can do the product innovation. But really, the competition is in outside of our company, it's us. And if we work on us and our Lightspeed and our team and training and all the things that matter inside of our four walls, that becomes our competitive edge we feel well
• 41:06
  Tim Montague: that's all I have.
• 41:06
  Tim Montague: I want to thank Brian, Anton and Zhehan. Let's grow solar and storage. I'm Tim Montague.
• 41:13
  Tim Montague: Thanks for being here, guys.