Latest / Clean Power Hour / Solar Innovation and Energy Resilience with Peter Oprysko| EP269

Transcript

Solar Innovation and Energy Resilience with Peter Oprysko| EP269 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Peter Oprysko: About string is that it, it can adapt to the topography. You don't need a flat ground. You can, you know, our products can be used in in mountains and caverns. There's a project that's going up a railroad track in in an abandoned railroad track in the state of New York. So, so again, you can make use of the land that's there and come up with the solutions. And I think you'll see more and more you can get a solar plant up a lot faster than you can create a new coal, oil or nuclear plant.
• 1:26
  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.
• 1:36
  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
• 1:52
  Tim Montague: today on the Clean Power Hour. We're live at Ari plus northeast. My guest today is Peter Oprysko. He is the key accounts manager for CPS America, America's number one three phase string inverter manufacturer. Welcome to the show, Peter. Thanks for having me. Tim, it's good to be here.
• 2:09
  Tim Montague: Yeah. I really enjoyed our conversation yesterday, which we had a little technical fail with. So here we are. And first of all, Peter, tell us how and why you got into the solar industry.
• 2:23
  Peter Oprysko: Well, you know, I have a degree in economics, and I have followed market trends throughout my entire career, and I've moved to where it looks the market was going, and solar is the place to be right now. This is a place with so many opportunities, so many ways, that we can look at really creating what I'd like to call American energy dominance, using clean power and being able to grow new opportunities for everybody around the country. So it's a place I'm having a tremendous amount of fun playing.
• 2:56
  Tim Montague: I get it. I sense that. And you know, I love solar because it's good for the economy, it's good for our human health, it's good for creating a safer, healthier future for humanity. If we can manage to step back from the brink of climate chaos. That's a question mark, but we're trying.
• 3:15
  Peter Oprysko: We try very hard.
• 3:15
  Peter Oprysko: And you know, I one of the things that has drawn me to be with CPS, for example, is the value that we planted, the value air the we're interacting with our customers before and after they work, they they purchase our inverters, being able to look at different different ways and applications for our product. I've been involved in projects that that span from community, solar rooftops, data centers, agricultural opportunities. The opportunities are endless, and the value that we add before and after from our company is really valuable to the key accounts that we have.
• 3:54
  Peter Oprysko: Yes,
• 3:55
  Tim Montague: I love that before and after. It's, you know, everybody loves good technology, and CPS has very good technology. You have to have very reliable, affordable, easy to maintain equipment. But ultimately, it's the people who make the world go around. Peter, you and I make the world go around. But there is a special thing in CPS about the people.
• 4:25
  Tim Montague: Yes, absolutely, they are not just ordinary people. They are very service minded people, and a service minded team culture and company as a result, and that is a game changer, in my humble opinion, for CPS. You keep you
• 4:42
  Peter Oprysko: know it's a service team, service mentality.
• 4:46
  Peter Oprysko: We We operate as a team to make ensure that our customers are whole. Our customers get the same type of support. I love customers who come up and say, you know, I called your your your hotline number, and I got somebody who answered the phone.
• 5:01
  Peter Oprysko: I mean, shocking in a different industries I've been around. I mean, that's that's a wonderful testament, but we're always there for them, and we look at a collaborative approach of working with our customers to ensure that not only we're adding value to them, but they can add value to the different operations that they have. You know, it this is still a new industry, and there are a lot of things that we're learning and developing, and new ways of doing it, more efficient ways of doing it, and by working with our customers, they can find new ways to power the electrification of the United States. And really look at being able to supply the power for a data center, for example, the energy needs are so enormous, and these. Are the types of projects that take the onus off the grid and put it back where, where it really belongs, which is with the project, and gives more control of being able to supply the energy for that.
• 6:03
  Tim Montague: Yeah, you know this explosion of data centers, the number floating around here, you know, I think in the US is that we're going to double the amount of electricity we're using in the next five years.
• 6:14
  Tim Montague: And it's data centers, the AI data centers, right? And electrification of transportation, electrification of everything, with HVAC being electrified now with heat pumps.
• 6:27
  Tim Montague: So we need a lot of juice. I mean, electricity, you look around, right? It gave us the modern life that we have, right?
• 6:33
  Tim Montague: It is truly amazing. And what's also incredible is you can get that from photons, right? That's why we love solar. If you can just capture those free photons, you have electricity. You can have it 24/7, off grid, even with solar and batteries, which you are becoming a leader in as well. So I'd love for you to comment about your CNI storage solutions and your grid scale battery solutions. Well,
• 7:02
  Peter Oprysko: you know, it's interesting we, because we do cover that gamut. Our company began providing solutions for the commercial and industrial the CNI marketplaces, and we've grown into being utility for our inverters. We're taking the same approach with our battery solutions, being able to supply the types of energy storage systems that would be required in a CNI solution, a one cabinet system with the batteries and and the PCs inverters in in one one cabinet to utility scale, beginning with a five megawatt hour battery system that incorporates the skid with all of the batteries in it, and a skid with the controllers so that each rack of batteries in that in that system is controlled by one PCs inverter, so that you can drain them all out before you start at recharging, extending the battery life, getting the more efficiency, most efficiency you can out of out of those batteries, really adding to that value proposition that we have.
• 8:06
  Peter Oprysko: Yeah,
• 8:08
  Tim Montague: I'm curious, when you're talking to customers about batteries. What is the average building owner's understanding of the value stack that batteries can provide
• 8:20
  Peter Oprysko: not as much as we would like, which gives us a great opportunity, because then we can start learning what their needs are. You see, the value really comes from what the needs are, and we experience this now, beginning in California with them 3.0 where the requirement is, if you're putting new solar up, you need to have the battery backup. Part of that is to ensure you don't have to invest in the grid and use the energy when it's needed most. That argument now can be used as we move east and with other people looking at CNI applications, it gives them the ability to have 24 hour access to the power that they've already generated, and if they have, if they are able to put some of that back in the grid, to optimize when it gets put back in the grid, so that it's when it's most needed, and maybe at a higher price for them. So but again, it's finding out what their needs are so that we can fill them.
• 9:13
  Tim Montague: You can think of a building as a nano grid. You know, Mike a micro grid. If you have solar and a battery, you have resiliency, you can provide grid services with that battery frequency regulation, for example, which you can monetize.
• 9:29
  Tim Montague: You can attack certain charges, like demand charges or capacity charges, which can be a big percentage of a customer's bill in CNI and and then you have things like peace of mind, yes, right, which are super valuable, hard to put $1 figure on. And then in manufacturing, you know, you have things like ride through if there's a brown out, and you're a plastics injection molding company, you can get some ride through that gives you the opportunity to do a controlled shutdown and avoid a very costly shut, uncontrolled shutdown. That's a thing with with batteries and facility owners just have no idea.
• 10:08
  Tim Montague: Really. They think of a battery as kind of monolithic, and it actually has this stack of value.
• 10:16
  Peter Oprysko: So you use the term resilience, and we see that, especially in in areas around the country where where weather is becoming a dominant factor in whether you're maintaining power in the grid.
• 10:25
  Peter Oprysko: And if you don't have the ability to generate your own power, store it and use it for other areas you're going to experience a shutdown. We see this in states like Florida, for example, that have been battered by hurricanes, the communities and the businesses that have used renewable energy, solar and energy storage systems were able to maintain power. Or throughout all of the storms, but those that didn't lost that and lost that opportunity. If you're a business and you can't operate for a day, it's like, like an airline seat that goes unfilled, you never get that revenue back.
• 11:05
  Peter Oprysko: And so being able to supply that value energy resiliency is important.
• 11:12
  Tim Montague: The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over eight gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS product lineup includes string inverters ranging from 25 kW to 350 kW. Their flagship inverter, the CPS 350 KW is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts. CPS is the world's most bankable inverter brand, and is America's number one choice for solar plants, now offering solutions for commercial utility. Ess and balance and Balance of System Requirements. Go to Chint Power systems.com or call 855-584-7168, to find out more, let's talk about your role a little bit as key count manager.
• 12:06
  Tim Montague: What is a key account for Chint, and do you have any favorite customers or iconic customers that you can call out. First
• 12:14
  Peter Oprysko: of all, every one of my customers is my is my favorite customer? That's a bad question to ask a sales person.
• 12:20
  Peter Oprysko: Tim, but no, seriously, I our key accounts are customers that we've worked with for a number of years who understand the different opportunities you can have with solar who have worked with us, helped us develop our products through their feedback, and who are looking at many different types of opportunities to apply our products. I've I have worked with some of the larger, largest solar providers in the United States, across the country, and I've also worked with newer companies that are emerging into these areas. Every one of them has has unique opportunities or unique characteristics that differentiate them, but they have one common thread. They're committed to solar and to finding different ways of using solar to meet meet the needs of America, America's energy explosion, and they use our product and are able to give us feedback so that it it becomes more of a partnership, instead of just a sales relationship.
• 13:25
  Tim Montague: That's what I was looking for. Is like, what is the quality of a great customer, and I think it has to do with companies that really want to partner. Yes, and not just buy widgets. The widgets are great.
• 13:38
  Tim Montague: We love widgets, but it's the relationship that where that's going to allow you to add more value and to smooth their journey, or speed their journey.
• 13:51
  Tim Montague: I like to say that's one of the things I do with my clients, is I help them go further faster.
• 13:54
  Tim Montague: If you can help an installer do more projects, it's helping their bottom line, but it's also helping the energy transition.
• 14:01
  Tim Montague: It's a win, win, and but if they're not willing to get into a relationship where they share their problems and sometimes their secrets where that is how you can really add value we are
• 14:17
  Peter Oprysko: able to create.
• 14:17
  Peter Oprysko: My role is to be the facilitator. That really is what I do. I don't know all the answers, but I know where to find them, and I know where to find the people to talk to, and I know who to how to introduce people. So the right engineer on, you know, with an EPC, to talk to one of our application engineers to talk about one of the issues that they have and how things could be improved, so that that can then be translated up. That's important to get that and then to get the feedback back to them, the greatest expression of gratitude I've ever experienced is when one company came and told us, you know, if you had this feature, it would be really great. Well, we escalated it up the line, and the feature appeared in our next inverter, and I was able to go to the customer and say, remember when we talked about this? Well, here it is. And they realized the value they had from that type of relationship,
• 15:12
  Tim Montague: you actually listened? Yeah?
• 15:14
  Peter Oprysko: We tried to do that. Yeah. You know, listening, hearing is one thing, but really listening to somebody understanding what their pain points are, what they need for success, what they're willing to do, those are important pieces.
• 15:30
  Tim Montague: Let's talk about the energy transition a little bit. I was talking about micro grids. There's also this macro grid, right? And this phenomenon that we touched on yesterday of power plants, for example, being repowered with solar, wind and storage, like coal and natural gas plants being shut down.
• 15:50
  Tim Montague: This. Is also a thing. The technology is totally scalable.
• 15:55
  Tim Montague: Yeah, you need a big solar farm, okay? If you're replacing a 500 megawatt power plant, for example, a gas power plant with solar and batteries, but it's totally doable now, and it's cost competitive. If you are a power plant operator, owner operator, and you're looking at your five year plan, you are definitely integrating renewables into that plan. Now
• 16:18
  Peter Oprysko: I've actually worked with a couple of developers in Texas, of all places that are looking to do repowers of existing coal and gas power plants using string inverters. I know of a project in Kentucky, 250 megawatt solar solar plant is what they're calling it, that is funded by five different universities to provide energy into an energy poor state like Kentucky to replace coal burning plants. So that is happening. The great thing about string is that it it can adapt to the topography. You don't need a flat ground. You can, you know, our products can be used in in mountains and caverns. There's a project that's going up a railroad track in an abandoned railroad track in the state of New York. So, so again, you can make use of the land that's there and come up with the solutions. And I think you'll see more and more. You can get a solar plant up a lot faster than you can create a new coal, oil or nuclear plant, Oh, for sure, yeah, and
• 17:34
  Tim Montague: especially nuclear, especially nuclear, yeah. But it really concerns me that there's so much news about next generation nuclear. It's not really next generation Yeah, yeah. The the military has been using, for example, SM, NRS.
• 17:49
  Tim Montague: These are modular reactors in nuclear submarines and nuclear ships like aircraft carriers, right huge machines, and it's amazing, these machines can operate for a year without refueling, and that's cool. But guess what? It's super expensive, super
• 18:05
  Peter Oprysko: expensive, and the regulations behind it, which are required and really, really necessary, are onerous, and
• 18:15
  Tim Montague: that's why we're not building nuclear power plants, yeah, but we're building lots of solar, lots of utility solar, absolutely, gobs and gobs. I mean, I think we're gonna do 40 gigawatts this year, something like that, something like
• 18:26
  Peter Oprysko: that. And look, you know, the United States is poised. In December, the United States achieved the capacity of producing 50 gigawatts worth of solar panels. Solar panels, that's the expected, that's the expected amount that we're going to going to create in this year.
• 18:43
  Peter Oprysko: So we've hit sustainability and solar panel manufacturing, and we're at the ability now to provide the types of inverters.
• 18:54
  Peter Oprysko: Look at the range of inverters we have from 25 kilowatts to 350 kilowatts. We can supply the tools necessary so that we can provide the energy that's necessary. So
• 19:09
  Tim Montague: what else should our listeners know about CPS and your work,
• 19:15
  Peter Oprysko: you should know that we're always we're always looking to improve. We're always looking to introduce products that can be served. We've had some new product introductions in the past few months, from what I understand, we have some new ones coming out this year.
• 19:30
  Peter Oprysko: As far as far as my work, well, I'm going to continue to look for customers that really want to be part of this growing movement, who want to be partners with us, who want to continue to grow and look at different ways that we can use our technology
• 19:46
  Tim Montague: well. Thank you, Peter. Thank you. Check out all of our content at Clean Power hour.com. Please give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from my listeners, and with that, how can our listeners find you?
• 20:00
  Tim Montague: Peter,
• 20:02
  Peter Oprysko: well, I would suggest that you go to find CPS first. Go to our website, CPS America. Look at all of our products. If you have any questions about any of our products, we're one of the few manufacturers that puts all of our data up there, so please go and look for that. You can also find our contact list there. My email is up there. Be happy to talk to you about any of our products and see how we might be able to serve you
• 20:27
  Tim Montague: with that. I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Probably.