Latest / Clean Power Hour / Cutting the Cost of Solar by Half with Andrew Birch of OpenSolar | EP263

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Cutting the Cost of Solar by Half with Andrew Birch of OpenSolar | EP263 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Andrew Birch: Tim, so like the but the critical point to me, Tim, is that if we don't solve the fundamental cost issue, we will be forever reliant on state and federal policy. If we can get the costs out the way, we have an open market, we can invest in our businesses, we can grow really unleash this over the next 10 years. But if we don't, we're going to be it's going to get worse, not better, because you've still got to get through net metering and all these other states, and who knows what will happen in Washington.
• 1:18
  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.
• 1:28
  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.
• 1:45
  Tim Montague: It's not often that we here in the US, really think long and hard about what's going on in other markets, but there are other solar markets globally that are further along than we are in the US. The cost of solar in Australia is $1 a watt, and we're going to be geeking out on what is going on in other places and what could be going on in the United States to half the cost of DG solar, resi and commercial solar. If we halved the cost of solar, what would that mean for your business? It would mean going from five to 50% of grid power in the next 10 years, potentially. So this is a real opportunity. My guest today is Andrew Burch, otherwise known as burchi. He is the co founder and CEO of an amazing platform called Open Solar, which is used by installers in residential and commercial solar. It's free for everyone, and we're going to talk about that a little later on, but first I give you. Andrew Burch, welcome to the show, birchie.
• 3:05
  Andrew Birch: Thank you very much. Tim, nice to be on. So
• 3:08
  Tim Montague: as we have been discussing, there's a lot to discuss. But what I wanted to start with you, you got into solar in 2002 so you've been on this journey for more than 20 years. You're from the UK originally, which I did not know. You're Scottish by birth, but spent time in the US and Australia. And you got into the into the solar industry when you were living in Australia. And if you're listening and you don't know this, Australia is further on the path. The penetration of PV in Australia is what birch 33% there you go. We're nipping at maybe 5% at best here in the United States, right? They have achieved 33% penetration in the Australian market. Now, granted, Australia is a small place.
• 3:54
  Tim Montague: Relatively speaking, the population is relatively small, but nonetheless, so I think that it would be great to set the table here with what is it that Australia is doing that has led to this high penetration, and also you're, you're, you're living now in the UK, and you have a lot of knowledge of the European market, and I'd love to hear what's going on in Europe.
• 4:17
  Tim Montague: But start with Australia.
• 4:20
  Tim Montague: Bertie, if you would. What was it that got your attention with PV?
• 4:25
  Andrew Birch: Yeah. So, I mean PV, to me, is just, you know, always been this very beautiful technology in so many different ways, the simplicity of it, the democratization of it as a solution, the economics of it, it's just a simpler, better way of delivering energy. And that was my kind of driver, you know, 20 plus years ago. That what you know is, I think, relevant to this question of Australia and where we are relative to the States, is how simplicity of the hardware and the technology can be broken by the lack of simplicity in how you sell and design and install solar. So, you know, it's got these, this beautiful attribute as a modular technology, that it can be installed, you know, in any size, size and scale, and the opportunity for it to be, you know, install that point of use of energy on people's homes and businesses has always been what I've been super passionate about. And what you've seen in Australia is, if you make the sales process efficient, if the kind of government and bureaucracy and red tape, frankly, get out of the way, then what you end up with is $1 a watt residential solar. So seven kilowatt system costs 7000 US dollars in the state in Australia today, that same systems $3.40 a watt in the United States today, which incidentally, is the same price it was on average, seven eight years ago. So like we've gone nowhere, despite the fact that panel prices have gone down 90.
• 5:49
  Andrew Birch: Percent because of all these other costs that you have in the United States relative to the Aussie market. So because it's a Bucha, what, and you can, you know, pick up a phone, go online, order your system, and it can be installed the next day or the next week, you've got very fast customer uptake, super low cost. And as a result of all that, 33% penetration and a really successful, kind of thriving Aussie solar market. I
• 6:17
  Tim Montague: mean, it's it's pretty much common sense. If you make the process of installing the equipment easier, it means that consumers will adopt the technology. It's not rocket science, right? And here in the US, one of our challenges is that we have so many HJ authorities having jurisdiction, right? Every state has their own programs, own rules. Every jurisdiction has their own rules. And so if you're an installer, you're swimming in code and swimming in unique HJ requirements, and that is just a huge headache. I mean, here in the US, when you say you can order solar and get it installed the next day, we just roll our eyes and go, What like that just sounds crazy, because here we're lucky if you could get install solar installed within a month, like, literally, right? That would be very, very fast. Yeah, that's
• 7:17
  Andrew Birch: as fast as you can go, and it's up to 656, months still, you know, in parts of the country. So Tim, like, you know, I, some of your listeners might know, but I was the CEO and founder of sunevity, which was one of the leading us solar companies for about 10 years from from 2007 to 17. And so we've got direct experience. We sold about a third of our systems in Europe and Australia, and two thirds were in the States. So we had the income statement of each business side by side in front of us. So we've got we had a pretty unique perspective back then of what the cost components are that are fundamentally driven by permitting. So it's the direct costs, as you mentioned, you've got this back and forward that takes anywhere from one to five or more months to process, and all of that means truck rolls visits to the actual HJ to physically deliver, organizing customer visits, and obviously customers cancel and move dates, and so you need a whole like function that costs money to organize the process that delivers the permit, in addition to actually generating the permit. As you said, each individual ASj has their own kind of interpretation of the state electrical code, and then each state's got a different electrical code, so you've just got this kind of massive of confusion and friction and expense and all of that increases other costs. Because, you know, if you have a if you have a 60 day installation cycle, then the customers cancel. You know, we find that customers cancel about 1% a day.
• 8:44
  Andrew Birch: So if you install it the next day, cancelation rates in Australia and Europe are like one or 2% but typically you're still seeing cancels from contracts signed of 20 to 30% in the States today. So that increases the acquisition cost, and all of that ends up adding up to a huge amount of work. And that $3.40 or what,
• 9:06
  Tim Montague: and you're you're truly suggesting that it's 3x more expensive to install solar, residential solar in the US than in Australia.
• 9:14
  Andrew Birch: That's absolutely right that we have the data.
• 9:16
  Andrew Birch: We've a third of us contractors are using Open Solar today to design and sell. We don't share any individual information and data, obviously, but we know the aggregate level by state, what the prices are, and we know the same we're over 50% share in Australia. So that's the real data today.
• 9:31
  Tim Montague: Yeah, that's crazy. So we Americans, we have to rise up. We have to have a sense of urgency. We have to support initiatives like solar app, and we're going to talk about that. That's a a joint venture, for lack of a better expression, right, a collaboration between the DOE Sei, a and others you know, to speed the permitting process, to make a platform that makes it easier for HJ and installers and the you know, what I've heard is the implementation is going very slowly here. Unfortunately, the app has been in the wild. The solar app has been in the wild now for a couple of years, but it's not getting a lot of traction, unfortunately. But what else about the Australian market? I guess Bertie, before we move on, is different. You mentioned, okay, you can just order it and get it installed.
• 10:30
  Tim Montague: So the permitting is, is the permitting universal across the country?
• 10:38
  Andrew Birch: Yeah, there's different interconnection rules and processes for the utilities by region, but there is a completely standard process across the country. If you're installed by a certified installer, you just, yeah, you chuck it on the roof. Yeah.
• 10:52
  Tim Montague: And, I mean, the technology is the same, right?
• 10:56
  Tim Montague: It's same hardware, yeah, it's very mature technology, right?
• 11:01
  Tim Montague: We've had solar for 70 years, so there's nothing fundamentally different about the technology.
• 11:06
  Tim Montague: The vast majority of the solar panels are made in Southeast Asia. You are a little closer to Southeast Asia, so maybe there's, maybe you can get panels at a cheaper price than we can here in the US. But what else would you like to highlight? I guess that's different about Australia and and also Europe than the US. So you've
• 11:28
  Andrew Birch: got the permanent is the absolute biggest chunk of it, like that is the source of the absolute majority of that cost difference. Other factors that are worth mentioning. You know, you now got 60% tariff size of the last couple of days on Chinese panels coming into the United States, you know. So you buy a panel for 10 cents a watt, and pretty much most countries around the world now, but you're, you're paying, you know, paying a lot more than that the states these days. And then you've got some building code stuff, you know, you metal conduit, and some of the other code issues are different in the states that add to the cost of goods sold. But that's maybe, you know, 4050, cents. The fact is that if everyone implemented solar app, if every state did it. Or if the federal government said, Look, we're just going to have a standard instant automated permit that that is implemented across the country, you would get to, we think about$1.50 or what. So you wouldn't get to $1 what, because of those other code differences and tariffs, but $1.50 a watt would more than half the cost of solar to American consumers, right?
• 12:32
  Tim Montague: And in our pre interview, you mentioned the Telecommunications Act that sped the expansion of wireless. Was it wireless telecom or wireless broadband here in the US? Yeah,
• 12:49
  Andrew Birch: broadband receptors, basically it was about satellite dishes. So if you go back to the early 90s, you used to have to go and get your HDA to approve putting a satellite dish up. The Federal Government decided, in its wisdom, that communication technology was incredibly important and that they needed to be, you know, automated ability for consumers to access the internet and put a dish on the roof, and so they just, you know, put it into the Federal Communications Act like it was 1996 and it was done. And so what's interesting, you know, you've heard me say a couple of times recently, it's a hell of a long shot. Who knows what Trump and Musk's real prerogatives are underlying some of these crazy headlines. But if they wanted to halve the cost of solar energy for American consumers. They could enact an automated permitting act, you know, so they could do the equivalent for dishes, satellite dishes for solar panels and EV chargers and batteries, and that would overnight halve the cost of solar and be very powerful.
• 13:48
  Tim Montague: So legislation matters, right? There is such a thing as good government. It's not all the deep state that is a bunch of hogwash, right? The government is the foundation for the good society that we have.
• 14:00
  Tim Montague: You need a foundation to give us access to education and healthcare and roads, transportation and, yes, solar and so there is definitely a role, despite what you see going on in America today in 2025 politically, let's talk a little bit about sungevity. Talk about the birth of the company, and then the rise and the fall.
• 14:31
  Andrew Birch: So the birth of the company was really just this realization that software could create a lot of efficiency in selling, designing and project managing solar. So we created a B to C Company. It was at the brand, obviously, with sungevity, we sold solar energy solutions directly to end customers in the US and Europe and Australia. And the idea was that we could use technology to make it cheaper and faster and easier. So we were the first to do what we called Remote solar design, the first in the in the industry globally, to use satellite and aerial images to design solutions and send online quotes to customers. That was the kind of big innovation. We then introduced binance, which, you know, with hindsight, was added a whole lot of complexity, and ultimately led to the, you know, the end of the company, because we were one of those businesses like Solar City and sun run, who were offering leases monthly pay zero down solar in that kind of online selling solution. So the company grew massively. We were top three, top three residential solar company in the States, and as I say, a third of the business on top of that overseas, we were going public in just during the Hillary Clinton Donald Trump election.
• 15:42
  Andrew Birch: So Trump v1 and unfortunately that you know, the Trump outcome is not what the money. Market expected. It's not what we, you know, the bank clearly leading the IPO expected, there was a, you know, immediately, a tariff on solar panels. But more importantly for us, it froze the finance market, which is, you're seeing a version of that here today, where the uncertainty of what the tax rules will be, you know, freezes the amount of capital that you can get. And when you're selling a lot of solar leases, that that's ultimately what led to the to the end,
• 16:14
  Tim Montague: gotcha, gotcha.
• 16:14
  Tim Montague: And
• 16:17
  Andrew Birch: Tim, if I may, like, just the thing, if I could just share, like, I, I spent a quarter of my life doing solar in the States, and I'm really passionate about this. I put a lot of my personal time and energy and money, even into into solar app. And the solution it fundamentally, we have to realize that the market is broken. It's really hard to see it when you're on the ground in the states selling and installing because you're so used to doing it the way you've been doing it forever with permitting. But if we can just break through and see how that every other country in the world has sold this where you don't have a two to three month HD driven permitting process. You just have a piece of paper or an online form you complete in an hour or less, and you can go and get that system purchased and put onto the roof, and it life is so much better. You can all build much bigger businesses.
• 17:04
  Andrew Birch: The market could be 678, 10 times as big as it is today, if we Yep. So it's like, we have to, kind of like, prioritize it.
• 18:04
  Andrew Birch: And we don't have an industry association that's prioritizing it, because it's focused on utility scale solar, because it's 90% of US solar today's utility scale. So we've kind of got to stand up as a distributed industry, as a resi commercial industry, and say, right, we need to solve this. And you mentioned solar apps been slow to deploy it has, you know, it's nearly eight years now since we started, since I started it with, you know, the help of Billy parish at Mosaic and Linder, which at Sun run. You know, it's taken a long time, but there are company, national companies today in the states that are doing about a third of their sales on solar app. In California, we've now got legislation, and it's becoming a really big part of the California mix now. So it is happening, but it's just taken an awful long time.
• 18:52
  Tim Montague: That's that's heartening. I'm glad to hear this. Um, I you know, when you look back at the last two years, there's been a lot of blood in the water in the solar industry.
• 19:04
  Tim Montague: A lot of big solar companies have gone bankrupt or exited the market. I'm curious, what is your analysis of particularly the residential solar market in the US, and what are your your cautionary words for solar installers who are ambitious and trying to grow and get bigger and operate in multiple markets, so globally,
• 19:30
  Andrew Birch: very quickly, globally, first, I'm incredibly bullish and optimistic about what solar is going to do for the world, and you've done this mass we'll maybe come back to on how we can get to 50% of global energy from solar, And just the next 10 years, when the caveat is when the market is allowed to flourish and thrive in an open, free market for energy. And unfortunately, America right now is suffering from the worst bureaucracy and the least open market for distributed energy that I know of globally. And so the problem is we're reliant unfortunately, the maths is simply when you have this extra cost, because there are 16,000 jurisdictions and $2 a watt of extra work you got to do when you're at 340 a watt, the math versus retail electricity prices is you need a 30% tax credit and net metering to make the math work meaningfully well. And so we're permanently as an industry, all these small businesses, all of us operating in this industry, have this guilty in hanging over us, which is, what are the federal government going to do, or this new administration going to do with with the ITC, and what is my local government, my state government going to do with net metering? And what you saw in California is, you know, when the utilities and the it was actually the utilities and the unions get together and sort of fight against distributed solar, right? They cut the net metering tax it, and we saw 60, 70% drop in that market. And, you know, 10s of 1000s of jobs lost, like criminal, horrible, so, like that. But the critical point to me, Tim, is that if we don't solve the fundamental cost issue, we will be forever reliant on state and federal policy. If we can get the costs out the way, we have an open market, we can invest in our businesses. We can grow really unleash this over the next 10 years. But if we don't, we're going to be it's going to get worse, not better, because you've still got to get through net metering and all these other states, and who knows what will happen in Washington?
• 21:25
  Tim Montague: Yeah, so let's put a pin in this on on net metering and tax incentives. Do those play a major role in Australia and Europe?
• 21:34
  Andrew Birch: No. So you the only, I think there's two major countries I know of that have net metering today, and then the remaining US states to.
• 21:40
  Andrew Birch: Netherlands and India, I think Pakistan also has a version of net metering. But, you know, in in the in Australia, there's gross metering, so you're basically getting wholesale prices for your energy, and you're incentivized, therefore, to have a battery. So solar, plus a battery, is now completely autonomous economic solution for your average homeowner. And yes, and net metering, when the utilities lose control of that, because you're just now acting the same as everyone else on the grid, they you take the power from them, you're able to grow, you know, autonomously, without their their ripping the sheet from underneath
• 22:18
  Tim Montague: you. So I love this. There's there. What I hear you saying is it's it's cool, people. We can relax about net metering. We have to lean into higher attachment rates of storage. Peanut butter and jelly, solar and storage. I know you don't eat peanut butter and jelly in Australia or the UK, but here in the US, it's a very popular food for children and but that immediately brings up the question of the price of storage. How do you how do you overcome that? Because, you know, you take your average solar project, say, 25 $30,000 in the US, and you add storage, and it's all of a sudden $45,000 which becomes a tougher nut to crack. I'm just curious, what is the how do you solve that problem? Well,
• 23:11
  Andrew Birch: so if you, if you get away from the permitting, and you get back to international standard pricing, then you're, you're actually at$7,000 for the solar and another two to $3,000 for the for the battery. So for $10,000 in Australia, you have a system that allows you to generate that power, charge the battery during the day and discharge when it's needed at night. And the economics of that are you basically avoiding that 30 cent retail price with the battery?
• 23:38
  Andrew Birch: So the economics of this battery suddenly are very attractive because you've got such high energy prices. You're tapping into
• 23:46
  Tim Montague: the cost of energy. How does that compare in Australia versus the US? So
• 23:53
  Andrew Birch: retail rates, so you're at about 15 cents. Well, I think 14 cents on average across the states. Obviously, it's a big variance between East West, Central California, East West, exactly. But you're in Australia, probably 25 to 30 cents, a high retail price, but quite low wholesale prices. You know, five, six cents wholesale.
• 24:12
  Andrew Birch: So with a battery, you're in cent. It's the same in Germany.
• 24:16
  Andrew Birch: It's the same in the UK. You know, there's an 80% attachment rate for solar in the UK now, because there's an open market, and it's your incentivized. You know, I basically have a battery here at my house. I consume power from from the grid to charge the battery between one, 1am and four, 4am for five pence per kilowatt hour, about seven cents per kilowatt hour. And I'm avoiding retailer, you know, during the day at 30. So the battery math works when you let the market work. It all comes down to, you know, overarching thesis is, we need an open market, a transparent, open market.
• 24:55
  Tim Montague: It's so ironic, right? The US is such a big fan of this unregulated economic model, right? And yet we are.
• 25:07
  Tim Montague: We're we. We're so constrained by our bureaucracy. Um, and I'm just curious. I don't want to go too off, far off the the path of the discussion, but is Elon Musk and Doge going to be the answer?
• 25:25
  Tim Montague: Do you think
• 25:27
  Andrew Birch: so? I you know, I don't know what his personal motivations are. Now, if they are still that the electric revolution is critical to the success of humanity and that Tesla is a really important part of that, then, yes, he should absolutely focus on this. So kind of a fun story. I got a hold of his personal email from a former colleague. He used to be a senior person at Tesla, and I wrote to him when the dose appointment was announced, and, you know, one in a million shop, but just said, look in two lines, you could have the cost of solar in America overnight with federal policy to automate permanent and I know that he is aware of this fact, because I know that he visited Tesla in Australia, was shocked that the price of solar was $1 or what he thought it was a mistake when his team were giving him an update when he went to Australia to launch the Giga battery out there, if you if you remember that bet he had with Mike cannon Brooks, the Australian billionaire, that I can put a gigabyte in by the end of the year, or I'll do it for free. Do you remember that? Yep, yep, yeah. So that
• 26:33
  Tim Montague: was a very audacious bet that he made. That was awesome. And he delivered,
• 26:37
  Andrew Birch: he delivered it.
• 26:37
  Andrew Birch: Yeah, it was incredible, absolutely incredible. And that Aussie team delivered that. And.
• 26:42
  Andrew Birch: It's been a huge success. But at the launch, he realized that permitting in Australia is so simple that, yeah, the costs are a third of the American price.
• 26:50
  Andrew Birch: So he's aware that it can happen. He even reposted something that wa was over 50% residential solar Western Australia. And he's like, this is the future. So he does. He's aware of it. It's just whether, amidst AI and power trips and all the other stuff going on, whether it'll get on his agenda or not. Yeah, it's kind of, you know, because we were down 25% you know, as a market in the last four years under a Democrat administration who had, you know, high hopes and aspirations who believed in climate and were progressive on a lot of these issues, but we're dying factors.
• 27:27
  Andrew Birch: We're down 25% so ironically, long shot. But you know, if the Republicans fix this, then it could be transformative for distributed energy.
• 27:37
  Tim Montague: Yeah, there is hope. There is hope that the Trump administration could do something really good right now.
• 27:44
  Tim Montague: They're causing a global trade war, which I don't see that as being a huge benefit to the American economy, but only time will tell. I suppose 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, I do want to revisit this topic, though, of of the solar industry, so many, CHAPTER 11, bankruptcies, Sun Power, ADT, Titan, Texas solar, pink energy.
• 29:06
  Tim Montague: I mean, the list goes on and on and and so and I in my conversations, the signal that rises to the surface is is twofold, greed and mismanagement. That's certainly the case with Sun Power mismanagement, they hired an executive, I think, from Amazon, who knew nothing about the solar industry. Like, what are you guys thinking? But I'm curious, what is your analysis and what is your advice? More importantly, to my listeners, many of whom are residential solar installers, resi and commercial, what is your advice to how to grow a sustainable solar business?
• 29:48
  Andrew Birch: I The honest answer is, I think the US is an incredibly hard place to do business, like all the people I know and hundreds of great friends and colleagues and partners over the years and resi solar, and you know, it's just a tough, low margin, very complex business, and it's really hard to scale because, you know, because every jurisdiction is different from the next. So the moment you become a multi jurisdiction selling installation business, you've got a lot more that you have to deal with, a lot more bureaucracy and overhead which just doesn't exist in other countries. So to me, the kind of advice is, you know, we need to simplify, both the industry and our businesses. Unfortunately, because the costs are so high, you have a very high preponderance of the need for finance, and because of the nature of the ITC structure, the finance becomes quite complicated. So getting you out, getting access to simple finance solutions is critical, and just being really careful about growth because of the complexities that come from permitting and fundamentally like as an industry, if all the CEOs and everyone listening to your podcast can rally around solar app and permitting and solving that once and for all, Then there's nothing stopping us going to 30, 40% penetration, and building really big, successful businesses, you know, across the across the country to deliver this technology.
• 31:14
  Tim Montague: So let's talk about Open Solar. What is it that you have built at Open Solar? And what does it, I guess, what is the problem that open solar solves? So
• 31:29
  Andrew Birch: it's, it's another part of this inefficiency of, you know, managing a business we're trying to solve for of all the paperwork and bureaucracy and truck rules and phone calls and just work you have to do to process a customer through and.
• 31:42
  Andrew Birch: Lead to an install and beyond.
• 31:42
  Andrew Birch: So open soul is a software platform. We've taken all our experience in the US market and other markets around the world, and we've built what we and I think our users think, is the best software solution to operate your business on, from managing leads to designing using all the AI and design automation that we've built, which is really the kind of one of one of the core pieces of the technology that we were the first in the market to launch, you know, 1617, years ago. So that design tool supports all the customer journey, the customer proposal and sales kit is second to none. So in one place, you can basically manage your system, manage your customer, sell contract project, manage procure hardware in many countries, use our payments tool to collect cash and manage your invoicing, all of that in one place, and all completely free.
• 32:34
  Andrew Birch: That's the value prop, so that you can be efficient as a business to scale, which is what we all want for the industry.
• 32:42
  Tim Montague: And how do you make it free? So, yeah,
• 32:45
  Andrew Birch: so really, a genuine win, win. You know, it's a wonderful model. Basically, you have free to the contractor, free, what we call the solar professional, the solar Pro for everything, always free. And we have these sponsors, these service providers, who pay, basically pay our bills. So for example, we integrate finance so that we can offer that to the pros. The pros can access zero down solutions to solve for that inefficiency we talked about, and we get paid a tiny clip from the finance provider. We've got over 100 manufacturers who support the app with sponsorship by paying us and supplying all their PDF and video content and marketing collateral, and we've got relationships with distributors and other service providers that basically pay to make the app free to their their customers. The pros and
• 33:39
  Tim Montague: is it? Is it truly open, though? You know in in that you allow competition within segments, let's say solar finance. Yeah, can any, can any solar finance company get on the platform?
• 33:57
  Andrew Birch: Yep, any finance company can get on you choose which one you want to use. Same with manufacturers, even if they don't sponsor the tool or their you know, their core information is still in the database. So you can design and sell with manufacturers of whoever you want,
• 34:12
  Tim Montague: very cool and and just walk us through. I mean, I'm looking at the partner tab.
• 34:17
  Tim Montague: So go to opensolar.com check out the partner tab. You'll see many equipment manufacturers that you recognize there. You know, solar edge, solar Sun Power, Sun tech, Canadian solar Fronius, near map, long G, iron Ridge, etc, etc, etc, um, excuse me, what does it take if you're a service provider or manufacturer to get on the platform.
• 34:45
  Andrew Birch: Just pretty simple. Just gives a ring, and we get you on, you know, it's all very standardized. Now we just want to have all, you know, the big efficiency when that we see in Open Solar, you know, the software is great, saves you a lot of time and money, increases your sales yields, just basically increase the scale and profitability of a business. The other thing that's really valuable, though, is the connectivity. So in one place, you can now access all the finance providers. You can access all the manufacturers, and increasingly, we're going to add other services like hardware ordering, so you can get at all these places and get all these products and services in one place. So big efficiency when that's that's kind of the big value driver we see very cool.
• 35:27
  Tim Montague: Is there anything else that our listeners should know about Open Solar?
• 35:31
  Andrew Birch: Yeah, I mean, I just think this. So we're going to be launching some cool stuff later in the year around electrification. So we're kind of taking it from just solar and storage to the full electrification journey, because we're excited to ignite some of that. Later this year, we're doing a lot of AI driven automation. So ultimately, we can kind of see a world where the pros, these incredible small businesses that really leading the industry, are able to focus entirely on the customer and the installation, so that we're doing all the paperwork and the processing and the ordering and helping with AI kind of manage a lot of that, that workflow, just to free up, you know, free up people to spend more time with customers, and maybe even more time with their families on a Friday afternoon. Who knows?
• 36:13
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I like to say that we, we knowledge workers, are just bot Wranglers.
• 36:15
  Tim Montague: Now that is a becoming a job, being a good bot Wrangler. I use several platforms every day now in my work, and I can't imagine not having them. Perplexity is my favorite search engine now, and Claude is my favorite content modification platform.
• 36:31
  Tim Montague: But I'm curious about how you see resi versus commercial, you know, in. In the US, the commercial market has lagged quite a bit behind the residential market, and we've already discussed there's a lot of challenges for residential solar. The challenges are different in commercial. I think there's a huge opportunity there. There is kind of a wave of installers coming into commercial now, leaving residential with changes like you mentioned with them, 3.0 in California, and we have a lot of runway. When you fly into a major metro in the United States, you see all those big flat commercial roofs that all could have solar rays on them, and only a tiny fraction do. But how do you see that in his open solar going after the CNI market?
• 37:27
  Andrew Birch: Yeah, so we support CNI on the platform. You know, vast majority of our users do some commercial, usually in the smaller scale, you know, sub megawatt kind of stuff. But yeah, I'm incredibly bullish about the commercial market. I totally agree that roof space issue is an opportunity is massive in a lot of other countries. What we're seeing because of the success of solar, is that, you know, there's quite a bit of pushback on land use as sort of one of the public matters that that surface in the media against solar. And so I think this real enforcing of the potential for commercial roof space and residential roof space is the answer to that as we scale is really, really important. We've done some work with Google at Open Solar, just analyzing roof space in some parts of the world. Most recently, we lead to the UK, and the UK has enough roof space to power the entire country of the United Kingdom with, frankly, the worst I'm looking at the window now, and I can validate that it is the worst weather you can imagine. But even with that problem, we can get 300 gigawatts of roof of solar on roofs here in the UK, which would power the entire the entire nation. Yeah, so, yeah, commercial and residential, both, Tim, you economically smart and just the right systematic solution for the future of energy, Yep,
• 38:49
  Tim Montague: yeah. You know, we, some of my listeners, will, will know the statistic we get five to 10,000 times more photonic energy landing on earth every day than we could actually use so we could power society many times over. We've we've already paved over 6% here in the US, 6% of the landscape with the built environment and roads, cities, buildings, etc, right?
• 39:17
  Tim Montague: So we just need to take one to 2% and that includes the built the existing built environment and some Greenfield. It's a both end. We need utility solar. We need distributed solar. It's a both end, but we're not going to pave over the bread basket, people. So just, let's put that to bed. That is not a concern.
• 39:37
  Andrew Birch: There's another one for you. There was a study I saw that Stanford did, which said 2% of all land mass is used by the fossil fuel industry today. So like, you know, our math at Open Solar is we need 1% to power the entire economy four times with 4x growth and electricity demand from from solar. So the math is kind of obvious. Yeah, we don't have a land problem, yep.
• 40:00
  Tim Montague: So what are some other big problems that you think about you and I talked about, for example, the fact that we could net zero our economy and still have a major climate crisis on our hands.
• 40:10
  Tim Montague: Right? 50 gigatons is net zero in the economy. Removing that pollution from the economy, we're at 450, ppm by the time we do that, in about 2050 if we're good, we're not necessarily on the good trajectory today, but we could totally do that.
• 40:26
  Tim Montague: There's legacy carbon in the atmosphere that needs to be removed, a trillion tons of it.
• 40:35
  Tim Montague: But what are the big picture problems that you think about Bucha? Well,
• 40:39
  Andrew Birch: think I mean, it's maybe worth talking about this S curve model that we just released a couple of weeks ago, because, because what I keep this model of the solar industry and the future of energy, and kind of geek out on it a bit.
• 40:51
  Andrew Birch: But what it's showing me right now is, if we carry on growing at 25% our annual solar installation number, which is just under 600 gigawatts in the last 12 months, then between 2025 and 2035 we go from 5% of energy, from solar to over 50% that's like that compounding effect finally kicking in. So as we talked about in our earlier conversation, Tim like what that means is you've solved over half the climate the ongoing climate challenge of CO two emissions in just 10 years, which, amidst all the doom and gloom of you know, the political landscape and environmental challenges today is a really like encouraging thing if we focus in on the policies that we need to deliver that 25% growth, like, for example, automated permitting in the US and what that. Curve.
• 41:40
  Andrew Birch: Then, does post 2035, is it kind of smooths out and hits, you know, something like 70, 80% solar, with the rest coming from wind and nuclear and hydro. So it's a zero carbon world. But as you say, unfortunately, there's still all that carbon in the sky, and we're coming stabilizing in our math at about 445, parts per million. So there's still a ton of climate risk even in that happy scenario.
• 42:07
  Tim Montague: So I assume, what, when you talk about the S curve, I mean, okay, a there is this phenomenon in technology adoption, for example, right?
• 42:15
  Tim Montague: And it's related to the cost adoption curve. Is that the fundamental phenomenon that you're referring to, though, the cost adoption curve, that as prices decline and consumption goes up, prices continue to decline faster. There's a positive feedback there, and that catapults you into vertical growth, exactly
• 42:38
  Andrew Birch: this feedback loop, the simple, very well understood, very proven feedback loop of what has been 15% per annum cost reduction since 2,034% growth are perfectly intertwined. Every cost reduction drives another incremental, you know, customer who can afford and should go solar, so that that cycle has driven very, very consistent growth, and yet the energy analysts all forecast a much more spreadsheet, conservative view of suddenly, we're going to go from that very consistent high growth to overnight. We're going to go to 234, percent for the next 10 years. And if you believe that, then you believe the report that came out on the weekend from vittor, one of the largest oil traders in the world, that will still be consuming as much oil in 2040 as we are today. And that's that's the mainstream consensus. So what I'm saying is, if you believe in continued growth of solar, ie, you believe in the learning curve, which is incredibly easy to believe, like it's just such a proven fact, then the logic statement is, you will hit 50% solar by 2035 and fossil fuels will be in deep decline in the 2030s
• 43:48
  Tim Montague: Yeah, yeah, that is, I totally see that happening. We have the technology, and there's lots of money flowing into the wealth transfer. This 100 trillion dollars of wealth transfer the jigger shot refers to is, is happening that that is a very good thing. And I, and I encourage you listeners, you know, if you're if you're in solar, lean in. Go harder, do solar and storage. And if you're not in solar yet, talk to me and talk to your friends in solar industry, because you have 30 years of pure growth ahead of you. Unlike fossil fuels, there will be an industry, but it's going to be a waning industry.
• 44:29
  Tim Montague: So burchi, in our last few minutes together, let's talk more about what professionals in the solar industry can do to support solar app and other initiatives like that, because I think it is fairly amorphous.
• 44:45
  Tim Montague: You know, we're in the trenches.
• 44:45
  Tim Montague: If you're an installer, you're busy, right? You're you're focused on your sales, your marketing, your installation, making your machine more efficient and getting projects done. That is a full time job.
• 45:02
  Tim Montague: But we also have to pop our head out of the hole like a prairie dog sometimes and go, Wait a minute. What's going on? And how can I be part of this bigger landscape? Because there is an important landscape there, like getting solar app instituted in your hj, so I'm curious, what is your analysis of what installers and our industry, and you mentioned sei a and their focus on utility solar. Do we need a a, an additional industry organization or a separate or, how does that work? Yeah,
• 45:37
  Andrew Birch: I mean, so, because it's sort of self fulfilling, because sia represents the solar industry, ostensibly, and because utility solar is 90% of all US solar right now, because down, because distributed has been so held back by permitting and this high cost base, you know, the seer does its job looking after the 90% so it's mostly focused on utilities, and that's what their boards focused on. And so we either have to, as an industry, get in touch with SIA, every single one of us, and say you need to represent solar properly. We want to be a third of your budget. We want that budget to focus on fundamentally solving for solar app and automated permitting, or we need a new, separate body, and some of the state associations like causa are fantastic, and they represent distributed incredibly well solar and storage.
• 46:29
  Andrew Birch: Ultimately, your state association is probably a great place for you to focus on for solar app, because state policy is basically more likely to happen unless you know Musk comes through with the doge play on. Federal policy, right? So, yeah, get in touch with your your local chapter, your local solar storage Association, and then the other thing I'd say is, there's an organization, permit power. So the URL, permit power.org that is a nonprofit that has been created that I've been involved with and supported as well to support the advocacy for solar app. So until we have a proper industry representative permit power.org, is the place to go to get involved and ask for their help getting your city and your state to do this. So if, if you support solar app through that, and you have open solar I would say, you know, sounds like a sales pitch, but it's free. It's amazing technology. It can help you get a very efficient process and help you scale your business.
• 47:29
  Andrew Birch: Those two things, I think, are the biggest solutions for for contractors in the States today.
• 47:34
  Tim Montague: Cool, yeah, I'd never heard of permit power, so check that out. Permit power.org and I completely agree. Join your state organization, and sometimes there are regional organizations also, like the Mid Atlantic solar and storage Association. Here in Illinois, it's the Illinois solar and storage association. So join and support and participate. It is.
• 48:06
  Tim Montague: It is only through our collective power as an industry that we're going to make change.
• 48:10
  Tim Montague: And it's not enough to just be a good installer. That helps.
• 48:14
  Tim Montague: Okay, it is a little bit of the Wild West. There is good, bad, ugly going on in the solar industry, there are some bad actors, but for the most part, we're good companies, good people, doing the right thing for consumers. But we also need to change the landscape and change the playing field, and as as we pointed out early in the show, we could lower the cost at least by half of the installation here in the United States, and that would skyrocket the adoption curve. Oh, my God, that would just be a game changer.
• 48:50
  Andrew Birch: We've got to believe, right? Just need to believe that it can be done. We collectively. Just need to, you know, be strong and believe and get it done.
• 48:58
  Tim Montague: I love it. Well, I want to thank burchi for coming on the show, the co founder and CEO of Open Solar and check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Please give us a rating and review. Tell a friend about the show. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from my listeners. We have a very robust YouTube channel. Follow us on YouTube and see me at a trade show. I'm going to all the major trade shows, the regional re, pluses, etc. We have three major shows here in Illinois that I'll be at. I'll be at NABCEP this year.
• 49:36
  Tim Montague: So please connect with me at a live conference. And with that, birchie, how can our listeners find you?
• 49:42
  Andrew Birch: Um, so, yeah, you can see, get me on LinkedIn is probably the best. And visit ebert.com there's a lot of you know, policy work and the S curve video at that website. And check out opensolar.com obviously, to see how we can help you through your business side. Too,
• 49:57
  Tim Montague: wonderful. I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Thank you so much.
• 50:00
  Tim Montague: Birci, Thanks,
• 50:02
  Andrew Birch: Tim. Have a good day. You.