Latest / Clean Power Hour / Power Electronics Evolution: How String Inverters Are Winning | EP259

Transcript

Power Electronics Evolution: How String Inverters Are Winning | EP259 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:51
  Joe Ross: How should I put this?
• 0:51
  Joe Ross: It's not that that it not only is good for the environment, it's the right solution for for the world, but it's also it has a good financial impact for the people that are embracing it and using it. And you can see it the folks look at New York City, like rooftop solar in New York City, it's ridiculous. It's it's all shame, but, but still, it's being done. It's seeing these large utility scale projects going into the old the old oil fields. It's like it make it just makes sense to do it, and it makes financial sense, which is really, I think, why you've seen so much growth in our industry over the last few years.
• 1:30
  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.
• 1:41
  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
• 1:57
  Tim Montague: today on the Clean Power Hour, power electronics, like inverters, the things that are doing the heavy lifting converting DC to AC in a solar array. My guest today is Joe Ross. He is the Associate Director of National Accounts and Channel Sales at CPS America, the number one three phase string inverter manufacturer in America. And Joe and I have an amazing conversation about the inverter industry, the power electronics industry. We follow the arc of the evolution of technology from central to string, but we also talk about growth in the industry, mentorship, what makes a good leader, what makes a good team, what makes a good product.
• 2:46
  Tim Montague: And these are the elements that CPS has put together, and it's just a lovely conversation.
• 2:51
  Tim Montague: Please stick around and check it out. Welcome to the show, Joe.
• 2:57
  Joe Ross: Yeah, because the technology is really it really is evolving, and we've seen it and but first, it was really difficult to to convince our customers. You and I both know that the really nice part about this industry is it's repeat business, so customers that we've known and have sold to and have had success with are still with us, and they trust us. When I transitioned over from from a from Advanced Energy, I had a startup in Santa Clara for a little while called high Q solar that was just a great fun product, and it really addressed all of concerns that these customers had about central inverters the breaking points.
• 3:37
  Joe Ross: So it was a solid state unit that was NEMA 4s it at the it looked like a heat sink, and at the end of the manufacturing, we actually pulled all of the air out of the internal inverter and back, filled it with nitrogen, just to mitigate against any potential oxidation. So we did really well with that product.
• 3:57
  Joe Ross: We just ran into a bad situation when we had to go to contract manufacturing. We're a victim of our own success. We scaled it.
• 4:04
  Joe Ross: It just we had problems, and it was at a very delicate point with our business when we were, you know, going through another round of funding, trying to get spin it up to a point where we could possibly take it public.
• 4:17
  Joe Ross: But never got there, when that kind of imploded, and there was a evolution of that product out back, and they rebranded their pro harvest inverter three phase for a commercial. It was a perfect CNI product, but again, they just didn't have the stomach for the the field issues that it was experiencing, or really the desire to to finance the the repair event. When I left there, I had been seeing Wagner for a long time, Brian Wagner at these trade shows, and he had gone to CPS right after he left advanced energy with Ed and Casey, and they were knocking around. And I know they were winning projects because I was losing them to CPS, but I see Brian at the trade show, and we always had the same setup.
• 4:58
  Joe Ross: He'd have a black box, their wire box, and a bunch of literature and his cards, and that was it. And at one point, I'm like, Brian, I go, how fun can this be for you? You just have the same it's a wire box.
• 5:12
  Joe Ross: There's not even any power electronics. There's not nothing to it. He goes, he goes, there's a reason for it. I can't really tell you about it, but there's a reason for it. Flash forward a couple years. Ryan becomes general manager. He hires me. I come on board in 2021 Yeah. And the first trade show I do, we're we're sitting there, and I'm at the now, I'm at the table, and I'm with the CPS logo behind me, some collateral in the black box is there. And I'm like, okay, great. Now here I am, and the first guy that walks in, Tim, I'm not no exaggeration, doors open. First guy that walks in, this installer, he comes running over the table, grabs wire box, holds it up to his friend. He can't really pick it up. He's holding it up. He's, come here.
• 5:52
  Joe Ross: You gotta see this thing. He goes, this is the easiest unit to install. He goes, Look at and he's, like, sticking his hands.
• 5:57
  Joe Ross: He's got these big, meaty hands.
• 5:57
  Joe Ross: He's sticking them in there.
• 5:59
  Joe Ross: He's, I can catch this. I can catch that. I'm not shocking myself on that. They go together. Super easy. Goes, I love this. And you know what, they haven't changed. I'm like, that's the reason, right there.
• 6:08
  Joe Ross: It's the same solution. It's the same wire box that he's been installing. He's not having to relearn how to put it together.
• 6:16
  Joe Ross: Yeah, he loves it. It's and he's selling it to his counterparts.
• 6:20
  Joe Ross: That was a real eye opener for me, once I fully appreciated that you realized the power of what we have, and it's really in terms of, as we said, it's customers that trust us having to go back in. I've worked for, I think, five inverter manufacturers now never been fired, just they've gone by the wayside. When I have to re engage with customers, and I was traditionally in the northeast, I would go back in. It was always like, Hi Joe, what do we what are you selling this this week, kind of thing. And I always believed in my product, and I sold in good faith, and they did have successful installations. It's just that now that they're they were installed, they were having trouble getting parts and technicians and people to work on them, so I always helped them there. But with the CPS product, the really, the great piece of it is it's so easy to maintain you have a power head and you have a wire box. If you have a problem with the inverter, 99.9% of time it's going to be in the power head, if it's in the wire box, something was wrong. They cross wired. You did something funky when you're installing it.
• 7:28
  Joe Ross: And we also have the ability to, before you commission, go in and just check that polarity on the wiring. Remotely, you call the 800 number, you get the technician on, pulls the unit up, looks make sure everything is set up correctly. So if you do have a problem post commissioning, once it's been generating power for months, it's going to be the it's going to be the power head, so it's four screws. You pop it off. We ship you a new one. Put the new one on. It's a five minute change over the old box. Ship it back to us. We try and get this done within 48 hours. So it's a really powerful approach, and now it's it's a concern for me that is no longer valid, that is this technology going to change?
• 8:08
  Joe Ross: Are we going to be changing over our footprint in the CNI space?
• 8:13
  Joe Ross: That will not happen, and we're carrying that same strategy into utility. So now that we're doing like larger scale, 1500 volt, we're still selling against those central inverters. People get comfortable. Guys that design these large plants, they know that they have all these panels, and it's they can put a big central inverter in the middle of it, and, you know, run their home runs to it and be able to done deal. But they're not thinking five years, 10 years down the road, are these companies going to be around? We went through a list earlier, of really good companies with smart people and great products. Then they aren't there anymore for one reason or another, and a lot of it is just code changes. With the string inverter, they look at it like there's just so many possible failure points on in the array. But the reality is, those failure points will only affect a limited number of strings if they happen at all, and if they do within 48 hours, likely you're going to have that up and ran again, and you don't need to dispatch one of our technicians to do it.
• 9:15
  Tim Montague: We have a classic example of this. Joe here in Champaign, the University of Illinois, has a two megawatt, I think, no five megawatt solar farm. It was called solar farm one, and it has central inverters and the inverter broke. And this was public knowledge that the inverter was broken, and it was broken for months. They could not get a replacement part. And so this a big chunk of the solar farm was down, which means they're not generating savings, and the asset owner, which was the third party, was not generating revenue. It was a lose, lose.
• 9:53
  Tim Montague: And this was just, it went on for four or five months. Yeah, and that's costly. And you think about an asset owner, they've got dozens and dozens or hundreds and hundreds of these central inverters that's going to add up, and ultimately that's going to sink your ship. And that's why people are jumping that ship and going to string.
• 10:16
  Tim Montague: And if you like the central design, great skid your string inverters, boom, yeah. You still have the access and the benefits of the string. You still have the design features of the central it's a win. And what is so curious, though? I don't know. I think it's curious people are so focused on capex, right, not on OPEX, and there are incentives for some developers because they're building flip. Developers, right? They're not going to be the long term asset owner. Yeah, and how do we get out of that mindset? Joe, yeah,
• 11:00
  Joe Ross: it's really, I think it's educating the end customer, the owner, having them really insist on having technology that is solid, that is easy to maintain that has warranties. It will take our warranties to 20 years. They need that assurance.
• 12:08
  Joe Ross: And it's very in again, you answered your own question, that it's the guys that are flipping these projects. They're just looking at the capex difference.
• 12:14
  Joe Ross: And now, really with string inverters, that's very that's a very small difference. You're talking pennies per watt. Now of difference in cap x, and that plant goes down, even for a week, even for a few days that, all of a sudden, is off the table. Now it's on par because the OP ex, the result is is not online. So it's really about it's up time, it's performance and it's maintainability over
• 12:43
  Tim Montague: the so do you have a rule of thumb, though, when you're having this conversation with a customer about okay, the capex is 2% more and the OPEX is 5% less, something like that. Do you have a rule of thumb?
• 12:59
  Joe Ross: I don't generally go that direction. What I tend to do is point to historically, customers, when they were designing with central inverters, they calculate into their project a replacement of those units, right? That, in itself, tells you that they aren't overly confident that these will have the longevity to produce power long term. Once you point that out to customers.
• 13:22
  Joe Ross: They don't really need that that comparison. They're savvy enough to understand that they need something that is replaceable again with a string inverter said it before. It's going to be a fuse, it's going to be a fan, it's going to be easy, simple stuff to fix. Or it's a 48 out within that that that type of time frame replacement of that power head, and then 95 99% of your project is still running.
• 13:48
  Joe Ross: So it's really, it's very it's a compelling argument. It's a compelling value proposition. I should say, we don't argue with our customers, but it's a it's definitely something that that the smart, the owner of that project, the guys that are clearly, you know, have something going on to be able to be in this business at that level, are starting to fully appreciate, and I think it's just, I think a lot of the it's just a, it's a, it's an inflection point in the growth of our industry, where, traditionally, they're not accustomed to that technology, because it's really only been viable or valued for less than 10 years, and really just over the past few years, they see the they see the opportunity there for security in their power production. And that's why CNI, you don't see central inverters ever used in a CNI project. No string inverter. So it just so
• 14:40
  Tim Montague: another question though, to that. Because, yeah, Brian Wagner, your president, is famous for saying, we sell a product that is guaranteed to eventually fail. What is it about a power head that fails? I think I have a lay person's understanding of how an inverter works. It's a box. It's got electronics. It's inverting DC to AC, which I consider a heavy lift, and that's why it fails.
• 15:07
  Tim Montague: It's really doing some heavy lifting day in and day out. But what exactly is it about a an inverter that wears out over 15 years, 20 years? Yeah, what's an
• 15:24
  Joe Ross: engine? That's essentially, if you think of it like your car engine, there's no way that you can say what's going to fail in this car. It could be the carburetor. It could be the radiator. I have a Jeep now I have no idea. I think it's a head gasket that I'm having problems with. But it can be any a myriad of things.
• 15:38
  Joe Ross: Oftentimes, as I said, it's something simple. That's the DC, the the catastrophic failures that we have seen have been consistent throughout the industry. When it was on a particular name plate output type inverter for for 1500 volt panels, and everybody had the same problem. And it was in that case, it was the the IGBT, so it was just a it was a bad designed unit that was sold to everyone.
• 16:07
  Tim Montague: And what does the IGBT do? It's essentially
• 16:10
  Joe Ross: like the it's like the piston, if you think it again in terms of so that's the thing that's really doing the energy cycling. So that's getting a lot of repetition through the day.
• 16:20
  Joe Ross: And in this case, they just weren't robust enough, and they had heat issues. Everybody had this problem. We were one of the very few, maybe the only company that really stayed with it. We saw all of our competitors exit this space, and we stayed with those because we believed in that technology. We knew that the overall platform was stable.
• 16:39
  Joe Ross: It was just this one. Aspect of it, this component. And then we work with that IGBT manufacturer who we had a good relationship with, and they made a change.
• 16:49
  Joe Ross: They put like a carbon aspect to the unit, which was able to mitigate a lot of that energy and get rid of that heat. And then we also put in fail safe devices within the unit themselves, essentially like a circuit breaker on the DC side, so it saw a certain condition.
• 17:02
  Joe Ross: It just shut the unit down before it got to there. So that's, that's an example with with my high Q product. That was just a totally different type of a failure. That was a capacitor we used to solve that we had no capacitors because that in three inverters early days. That was the that was where you primarily saw the and again, it could just the energy cycling. They've seen a lot of changes, and they're, you know, doing 10s of 1000s of cycles a day. So
• 17:30
  Tim Montague: Joe, Dude, give us, give us a cliff notes version of the evolution of power electronics as you've seen it because you've been in the industry now for 20 years in the power electronics industry, what was the tech when you got in, and where have we come today?
• 17:44
  Tim Montague: Just in, in three, in three minutes, if you can, in
• 17:50
  Joe Ross: three minutes. Yeah, all right, start the clock back in my day. No, yeah. So when I first came into the industry, it was all central embroidered, and I really, I What in I was in the semiconductor industry before I saw the smart, good, fun, nice engineers migrate over to solar because of the right reasons. So the only game in town was a central inverter, and I went to work for a small company in Bend which was ultimately acquired by a little bit larger company in Fort Collins. So that was really the genesis of my career in inverter sales, and we did really well with those products for a number of years. And then there was a change that we saw.
• 18:28
  Joe Ross: And we started seeing these small little boxes. So it was really like the computer industry back in the day, going from like the central computer stations, these big rooms full of computers, to laptops. We started seeing laptops, and we said, what should we do? Should we build our own laptop? Or should we, you know, find a laptop that we can that we can sell on this market? And the company took that latter direction, and so the change was made. Unfortunately, it was the wrong decision for that company, and it ultimately, you know, put them out of the solar business.
• 18:59
  Joe Ross: They're still in business, but they're not doing any solar anymore. But from that, a lot of smart guys blossomed out. And instead of continuing to sell central inverters, they started selling string inverters. And the reason was real simple. It was just, it was, it was a product that, if they're selling through the channel, they could put on the shelf. If it was a product that they were selling to their end customers, they felt good because of that easy maintenance. And it was very straightforward, energy efficient, and a very just a nicer design, more more a simplification. So that's, I think, my three minute version of how the industry has evolved.
• 19:36
  Joe Ross: I probably skipped over a bunch of stuff there, but that company
• 19:40
  Tim Montague: in Bend became Advanced Energy. Is that,
• 19:44
  Joe Ross: yeah, they did yeah.
• 19:44
  Joe Ross: So it was PV powered in Bend, great group of guys, just amazing technology. Really, very powerful. The biggest competitor was advanced energy in Fort Collins. They and really, ultimately, the biggest dog in that game was SMA. So this was when SMA was just a powerhouse, and so they decided that, instead of trying to fight independently, they would merge these two companies, because the inverter technology was different enough that they weren't really competing with the same customers. Advanced Energy had that dual balanced array, or talked about earlier, worst marketing ever bipolar solution, but it was really suited for utility scale business. The larger the larger solar farms, just because of the simplicity. And really it was the wire savings that the DC runs were really small. You could just come back to the plant with longer AC runs. So that was the value of that advanced energy, PV powered, was more commercial scale. So it was when, you know, people were still using central inverters on rooftops, not on the rooftop, but, you know, bringing the conduit up to the rooftop because it had the transformer built into it. So that was, you know, the merge of those two groups.
• 21:00
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I witnessed.
• 21:00
  Tim Montague: I got into solar in 2016 and I've only seen two CNI projects with central inverters. These were, one was a large CNI, like a megawatt scale project, and one was like 250 kW project. And but yeah, never again. Those were both like in 2017 that I saw those in, yeah, and they both had problems, and ultimately were replaced with string inverters, with
• 21:31
  Joe Ross: string inverters, like we've been talking about, yeah, if you want to see a bunch of CNI projects that were built with central inverters, go to New Jersey. My old boss. Shout out to Kevin Purdy, okay, did.
• 21:40
  Joe Ross: Dominated that market for years, and everything up until I would say 2012 2013 was central inverter, and that company was up that Kevin worked. Kevin brought me into PB powered. And then he also, you know, was my boss at Advanced Energy, and he's I, Annie is actually a customer now, which is a lot of fun with what can be called Power flex. Hello, yeah,
• 22:11
  Tim Montague: power Flex is a EPC or an asset owner. They
• 22:14
  Joe Ross: do both. They do both.
• 22:14
  Joe Ross: They own projects, and they also they build. They're the,
• 22:19
  Tim Montague: they're the DG arm of a bigger IPP, right? I believe
• 22:23
  Joe Ross: so, yeah, I believe so. Kevin doesn't share a lot with me anymore, but other than the aspects of my product that don't quite suit him, but that's that's just Kevin being Kevin.
• 22:34
  Tim Montague: Yeah, power Flex is a EDF company, okay,
• 22:38
  Joe Ross: yeah, exactly, yes. I
• 22:41
  Tim Montague: don't know why. I don't know why the IPPs feel they have to rebrand their DG divisions, but they do this. So whatever,
• 22:49
  Joe Ross: yeah, because of a separate PNL, or there's some tax reason. It's
• 22:53
  Tim Montague: a good name power flex. I like it, yeah,
• 22:56
  Joe Ross: yeah, and he's doing well with them, but yeah, he, he dominated that market for CNI.
• 22:58
  Joe Ross: But again, you don't see any any central inverter is being used on right?
• 23:06
  Tim Montague: And this has to do with reliability and cost, ultimately, right?
• 23:12
  Joe Ross: Absolutely, yeah, even just from the installation perspective, you got to bring you got to pour a pad. You have to bring in a crane. You need a crew. You need trained engineers there in CAD 50 suits if they have to repair stuff, it's just they have, like, water systems for cooling. You use fans.
• 23:32
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it's more, it's more like, it's more like a diesel generator scale of a device,
• 23:38
  Joe Ross: kind of, yeah, with harder with harder problems. I think diesel generators are, pretty well vetted technology.
• 23:45
  Joe Ross: We
• 23:45
  Tim Montague: do have a community solar project also here in Champaign Urbana. It's a landfill project that has central inverters. It's, it was two two megawatt side by side projects, but they've got two megawatt central inverters and but that's the only community solar project I've seen with central inverters. I don't know why that decision was made,
• 24:07
  Joe Ross: like, Isn't matched, but you have a two megawatts of pounds and, oh, there's a two megawatt engine that I can just put right next to it. Yeah, they're not, it's they're not looking long term in terms of them and reliability. And if that engine goes down you were talking about earlier, all of a sudden your OPEX is erased, and your capex was is now flipped.
• 24:27
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I won't be surprised when I go visit in five years and there's a cluster of string inverters there instead.
• 24:36
  Joe Ross: Yeah, and that actually brings up a really interesting new opportunity for us. Back and resell the customers we sold to five or 10 years ago, and that's what the retrofit fits us. We're seeing a lot of activity. We talked about that list of embroidered companies that are no longer in business. Yeah, we do have the ability to go in and do retrofits on a lot of those. And really the key. I just can put my glasses on. Made a note here, the key for us, the real low hanging fruit for the Retrofit is the 690 volt AC in that kind of range, with 400 amps or less for the for the source circuits on the DC side. So that's really the sweet spot. We can go in.
• 25:21
  Joe Ross: It's a very simple approach, we have some very smart application engineers that are getting a lot of experience doing this, something that we really started to focus on about a year and a half ago, and now we've done a number of projects and have some really good success. I would encourage anybody that is experiencing issues with their central and rural even if it doesn't fall under that criteria, just reach out to us and let us know, and we can put you in touch with the right people to determine if a string inverter conversion is is appropriate. So we'll add for us, Yep,
• 25:54
  Tim Montague: definitely. 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 8558, 471, 68 to find out more, we're talking with Joe Ross. He is the Associate Director of National Accounts and Channel Sales. And Joe, we need to get a little bit of your background. How did you come to get into power electronics? And then I want to geek out a little bit on your role at CPS.
• 27:06
  Joe Ross: Yeah, great, yeah, thanks. So I got into power electronics through a one of my favorite bosses. I work with them at a Rockwell Automation and we had a lot of success. We were doing very high level precision Motion Systems, really outside of my my comfort zone, but working with this, with this manager, he he taught me so much, and I really trusted him.
• 27:30
  Joe Ross: We had a great we still do. We have a great relationship. And so when I left Rockwell, I went to work for a company that was actually competing with Rockwell, called Danaher. And one of the focus, again, it was precision Motion Systems. And one of their big products was a, it was a, it was a gantry system that was used to evaluate, at the time, flat panel TV. So they would go in and do an inspection high precision motion. But it just so happened that form factor was exactly the same as a solar panel. So we saw this company, first solar in Ohio, Allison, come up on the board.
• 28:05
  Joe Ross: Everybody is excited about their technology, their cat top. And they, they had a they had an issue with the way that they were essentially manufacturing.
• 28:16
  Joe Ross: It was, it was an A laser ablation system for the three layers of, you know, cattle.
• 28:20
  Joe Ross: Some, I won't go into the details, but we really so we, we built a machine for that, and in in doing that, and we, and we were successful. We weren't successful with with First Solar. They had their own approach, and they decided to stay with it. They want to change it, which I understood, but we were able to sell the system to a GE when they were building their when they were trying to compete with first solar. So in doing so, we saw the forecast for the solar industry, and then, you know, I saw the hockey stick, and I just really felt at that time, and it was like early days when we started to see some environmental changes too. And I knew that that energy production, that clean energy production, was going to be a real important piece, and it was going to be a real future for not only my career, but for them, for the greater good. And at that same time, I started seeing a lot of these really smart, good engineers, guys that I work with at polar at Peter Kane started a company called Evergreen solar, and he was doing a film type of so they were these guys that also had that same idea and same I'm not going to give myself credit for vision. I essentially followed the smart guys over to you, over to over to solar,
• 29:31
  Tim Montague: and this was in the mid 2000s right?
• 29:36
  Joe Ross: Yeah, yeah, yeah, early, yeah. It wasn't quite it was like around 2008 2009 ish, yeah, yeah. That range
• 29:43
  Tim Montague: I like, in the modern solar area in the US, was started in about 2010 that's when things really started to ramp. Yeah, I assume that's because of the cost adoption curve, but maybe it's a combination of things. I don't know if you have any ideas about that. I think you're
• 29:57
  Joe Ross: right on. I think you're right on with the that's when it really started, when you started to see the price points come down. When I started first selling inverters, we were selling them for 28 cents a watt. Now inverters are we're selling them for four cents a lot. That's a pretty dramatic change to see over that time frame is impressive. And we got parity with diesel or fossil generation of energy, I think three or four years ago. You see what's going on in Germany now.
• 30:23
  Joe Ross: So that's really in Germany was really the market that everybody, they were early adopters, full commit good technology,
• 30:30
  Tim Montague: and let's put a pin in this too. Yeah, the reason Europe and to some extent, Japan, were early adopters is because they didn't have a lot of cheap fossil fuels. There is some very dirty coal, I think, in Germany, but it's not great coal, right?
• 30:48
  Tim Montague: Nothing like the coal we have in the US. And we just have gobs and gobs of coal, oil, natural gas. And so we were just drill, baby, drill my my grandpa worked in the coal industry in media.
• 31:01
  Tim Montague: He had a magazine called The Black Diamond, and so I'm just the modern version of that, yeah, with the Clean Power Hour, which is awesome. I love standing on I love acknowledging that I stand on my forebears shoulders, absolutely.
• 31:18
  Joe Ross: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 31:18
  Joe Ross: And you're the evolution of that our industry. This is, this is where it's gone, and it's going for the right reason. And it's great to have folks like you and with that kind of experience working
• 31:29
  Tim Montague: here. So okay, so fast forward. You've been in power electronics a long time.
• 31:32
  Tim Montague: Brian Wagner becomes the GM at CPS recruits you. Yeah, and I.
• 31:38
  Tim Montague: Tell us about your journey at CPS, and what is your primary role, or what are the hats that you're wearing? Yeah,
• 31:50
  Joe Ross: yeah. And again, Brian, I actually go a little bit further back then than that.
• 31:52
  Joe Ross: He actually worked for us at Advanced Energy, and he was doing he was selling our service contracts. And when that group disbanded, that that same smart boss, Kevin pretty said, Hey, we gotta bring this guy on board.
• 32:06
  Joe Ross: We need to spin him up to speed.
• 32:06
  Joe Ross: So I had that privilege of helping Brian learn the industry and learn the business back in the day that was probably 2012 2013 so yeah, he's but and where Brian has gone with his career is extremely impressive. Again, my team at the trade shows we talked about this earlier, he's always, you gotta come work for us. I'm like, I don't wanna sell that black box. I got cool stuff. I got my startup. I'm good. And so finally, when he was on being paid to become, you know, the general manager of CPS, we're talking and so I helped him through that process.
• 32:37
  Joe Ross: And in doing that, it reminded me of how much fun it was to work with Brian and in the success that I saw for that company, it really felt looking back at their previous six years prior. So I came on board in 2021 so up to from like 16 to 2020 they were stuck at a certain revenue point, and I couldn't really understand why exactly. But then when I came on board, it we became apparent to me that we didn't have enough customers. We weren't talking to larger EPCs. We weren't making that penetration. I think we were relying a little bit too heavy on on one of one of our partners who we were white labeling with, so they had plateaued the first year that we came on board. We were able to increase that revenue by about, I don't know, 12% 15% as a result of not just myself, but we brought on some really good people. And in doing that, the company grew, and our culture was evolving. And we had some folks that weren't in line with that cultural change. They kind of liked where they were. They like that that level out business. So we had some we had some significant attrition. So at that point, we had accounts all over the country that had lost representation. So Brian felt comfortable enough to give me those as my as my primary customers. So that's how my national account role was established. And I still have those customers. I really appreciate them, and do a lot of work every day with those accounts. I try and be as consistent with my work as possible. Can
• 34:11
  Tim Montague: you give me an example of what is a national account? For you,
• 34:15
  Joe Ross: a national account would be like pivot energy is a good example. They have an EPC arm, but they also do a lot of work with other EPCs nationally.
• 34:22
  Joe Ross: That's going to be an example of a national
• 34:27
  Tim Montague: account. We're from St Louis originally. Oh, is that
• 34:30
  Joe Ross: right? Yeah, I didn't realize that, yeah, yeah.
• 34:33
  Joe Ross: They're in uh, they're obviously, now in
• 34:35
  Tim Montague: uh, obviously. But they're, they're becoming an asset owner too. Now, yes, yeah.
• 34:40
  Joe Ross: And there's, and there's a great example. Pivot is a perfect example of a company that has identified what is the primary value of the string inverter, of the inverter itself. What do they need if they're going to own these projects? What do they want on their systems? And it's the CPS string inverter, just because of the historic uptime and the ease of maintenance. Okay, yeah, so that's, that's, that's, it goes back to why would somebody, yeah, there's a little bit of a CapEx difference between the central and the strain. Why would? Why would they buy the more expensive? And I put that in air quotes, because the difference is minimal. Now that's because they need to have these things run for 10 to 20 years, and they need to know that if something gets broken, they're not going to lose the whole plant. They're just going to lose a little piece of it. So that's a savvy owner.
• 35:31
  Tim Montague: So you're, you're, are you truly working nationwide? Then
• 35:36
  Joe Ross: I am, yeah. In fact, that was, I expanded to Hawaii.
• 35:40
  Joe Ross: Actually, this year I had the opportunity to go to the Ari Hawaii
• 35:42
  Tim Montague: show I saw that.
• 35:42
  Tim Montague: How was that?
• 35:45
  Joe Ross: That was, it was good.
• 35:45
  Joe Ross: It was, it's, it was only the second year they've done it. So it's a smaller show, yeah, I think from a few were exhibiting there, looking around, it just didn't seem like it was really anything was going on, however.
• 35:58
  Joe Ross: So the people that were walking around that show were very and I made some really nice contracts.
• 36:02
  Joe Ross: I found out about a 400 megawatt feeder plant that's being built biomass feeder. They're not doing 400 megawatts worth of solar, but they're going to need solar to do some of the Powering involved with well
• 36:16
  Tim Montague: and Hawaii is truly our most mature solar market. Has the greatest penetration of solar. It's just a small state population wise, right? So it's not a huge market like California. California is the big dog, or, historically, was. Now, Texas has surpassed them on an annual basis because of all the utility solar happening in Texas. Yeah, but
• 36:39
  Joe Ross: yeah, and it's interesting Texas that's fossil fuel country. Right there in I think looking at Texas, I think the major reason is in Maine is a big guy. There's a big market now that I live in Maine part of the time. I'm in New Hampshire right now, but yeah, the projects that we're quoting the larger scale utility in, people ask me, What? What's the reason?
• 37:00
  Joe Ross: It's the same reason as Texas, they have the land they have.
• 37:03
  Joe Ross: They've good they have better radiance in in the south, obviously, but they also have
• 37:07
  Tim Montague: more trees to deal with in Maine, yeah, not where they're putting
• 37:11
  Joe Ross: these. These are in the old so that's the reason, because they have the infrastructure there. They have the off taker, they have the utility lines, because it was they, it's where they're harvesting all the trees. Oh, they've actually knocked the trees down now, there's got it, but, yeah, shrooms up there. But the same thing with Texas is they have the infrastructure to take the power back to the to the end user. Yeah, it's really, it's a beautiful thing, and it's and I love the fact that it's not that we're, how should I put this? It's not that, that it not only is good for the environment, it's the right solution for the world, but it's also it has a good financial impact, you know, for the people that are embracing it and using it, and you can see it, you know, the folks look at New York City, like rooftop solar in New York City, it's ridiculous. It's all shady, but still, it's being done. It's seeing these large utility scale projects going into the old, you know, the old oil fields. It's like it make it just make sense to do it, and it makes financial sense, which is really, I think, why you've seen so much growth in our industry over the last few years. And that's what's it's
• 38:23
  Tim Montague: incredible. I don't, I don't, I don't think Donald Trump understands, really the fundamentals here, right?
• 38:28
  Tim Montague: Photons are free. Oil in the ground is not free, and you have to dig it out, right? The photons are just raining down on us, and there's 10,000 times more of them than we could actually use at any time, and so we can power society many times over with photons alone. It's truly a massive resource. Gotta build a collector called a PV panel, but and then invert that power. Blah, blah, blah, Joe, we need to wrap this up shortly, but I would love to touch on your channel responsibilities, Channel Sales, mentorship and growing the industry, right? We need a lot of new talent coming into solar. We're recruiting from oil and gas because oil and gas has peaked and is shrinking.
• 39:16
  Tim Montague: There's still jobs in oil and gas, but a lot of people are migrating, and that's as it should be, and then coming in from other from fresh out of college. We were talking about our friend Brian Clemente, and what a great career. My own son.
• 39:30
  Tim Montague: He's 22 he's a project manager at Winfrey solar. Shout out to Winfrey in Chicago, Illinois.
• 39:35
  Tim Montague: Just a wonderful career. But would love to hear your thoughts about mentoring and bringing others into the industry, but talk about first, talk about Channel Sales.
• 39:46
  Joe Ross: Yeah, so Channel Sales, it's something that we really reengaged with over the last 18 months, and it's been a real eye opener for me. I think that we were missing out on a lot of opportunities. Our competitors were heavily involved with with the channel, and we weren't really participating because of just historically, we weren't. We were more of a direct model. But the way that I've structured it, I've identified six major players that we do business with, the gray bar, CED, green tech, Rexel, sonapar, BayWa, and then I have a couple additional partners, and Wesco, and then I have a couple additional online partners that we do this so, but it's structured differently than a traditional channel relationship. We don't ask them to they can, if they want, if they have projects specific needs. They can certainly put our material on the on their shelves, but we don't ask them to do that. The pricing is consistent. It's our list pricing through the entire channel. So there's no there's no conflict there. We are now discussing a opportunity to maybe work with some of our regional people with the channel, just so that there's much more clarity and and focus on projects that we can help them win and then be there with the project scale to a point where they really do need to work with the manufacturer directly, just to ensure production and supply. So it's a very open book relationship, and they've been really our channel has been very responsive. Still early days, but I see a big opportunity, and we have some new products too, that would really make sense to have our channel help us with it's been fun,
• 41:23
  Tim Montague: cool, and we and maybe we should circle back. I want to talk about mentorship, and then let's close out with a circling back to central to string. Okay, we did talk about central to string a fair amount, but I just want to put a bow on it, yeah, but let's talk about grow. The industry, one statistic that you listeners should know is that we need a million new electricians in the energy transition. It's all forms of the built environment that need electricians, but obviously there's a lot of them needed in solar. That's just one example, right? One trade. We need many types of trades, people and professionals coming into solar, wind, storage, etc.
• 42:08
  Tim Montague: It's not a question of if we're going to make the energy transition and net zero the economy. Ultimately, it's just a question of how fast and human labor knowledge is a limiting factor many times, right? You can't just snap your fingers.
• 42:26
  Tim Montague: I'm curious what your thoughts are about that. Yeah,
• 42:29
  Joe Ross: no, I agree. I think, in fact, you're talking about your son. I'll talk about my son, who is decided after a sophomore year not to go back to college that he wants to get into. So right now, yeah, he's working in construction as a project manager, but I really see bad opportunity for trades people, especially electricians.
• 42:46
  Joe Ross: It's a great career there. It's, it's sustainable. It's going to be the growth tool for for our economy moving forward. Yeah, and in, from our perspective, we're, we're constantly bringing on new talent. A lot of folks that we've hired recently have been straight out of college, so we have established a mentor program with some of our senior people. I have the privilege of working with one of our marketing guys, Brian Clemente, who you mentioned earlier, is going to be a superstar in this industry, and it's just, I'm looking forward to watching his career blossom, but what it really comes down to Tim, I think, is just getting the just the kind of knees to knees, nose to nose, experience with our customers. Our customers are great. They value what we offer them. They value the support that we stand behind them with, and they're more than willing to spend time with us and in with our new hires and just talk about what's important to them.
• 43:46
  Joe Ross: That's really the thing that we need to teach, I think, and in part, to the folks that are coming into this business, that you need to really listen, you know, to what people are saying, what's keeping them up at night, and do everything that you can to address those issues and be responsive, and that's where you're going to be successful and provide value. It's all about providing value for our customers. Yeah, it's been fun.
• 44:16
  Joe Ross: Some of the other folks that are mentoring, they're mentoring some sales people. We're mentoring some some folks that are on our logistics team. So it's just really great environment to watch these young people. And sometimes you just assume someone knows something.
• 44:28
  Joe Ross: And really it's a bad to go in with that kind of thought. You need to really ask them what their challenges are, what they think that they need to succeed where, where they want to see their careers go Brian. So it's, so it's been fun. I've and I'm learning as much, I think, as I'm imparting. So it's, it's a really great, great relationship. I love
• 44:52
  Tim Montague: that when we give back to others, yeah, we also gain often more than we have given. And that's the beauty of mentoring and sharing your knowledge with others. So thank you for doing that, and thanks for CPS for having a mentorship program. It's so important that companies do this to basically accelerate the development of these professionals like you can help Brian Clementi go further faster than if he doesn't have a mentor who's standing by him side by side and helping him find his way. It truly is a win.
• 45:28
  Tim Montague: I think
• 45:32
  Joe Ross: Brian would have been successful regardless, but oh for sure, yeah. I'm just, I'm happy to, yep, I'm happy to be part of his, his his evolution, and in really, with Cheryl Rogers that came up with the idea our the person that runs our customer operations. She saw in these meetings, us doing presentations, talking about our forecasts, our customers, projects we want. And it would often like afterwards say, if there was only a way that we could just tap into your brain and download it into and then she started thinking about more, and Cheryl came up with the idea for the mentorship program. So we've got, I think of our leadership team, like maybe 15 of us that are there, engaged with 15 individuals within the teams. It's going to be really it'll be fun. So I would encourage too people, if they're listening to this, looking for a job, reach out to to Ryan on LinkedIn, you'll find Ryan Pasquale, right? Yeah, yeah.
• 46:24
  Joe Ross: He's our primary recruiter, and just does a fantastic job. So he'll take you down the path.
• 46:32
  Joe Ross: And there's, there's definitely opportunities here within the business.
• 46:36
  Tim Montague: So let's go back to, let's go back to Central, to string, yeah, in other markets we talked. Germany, we talked about Asia. Right in other markets, this phenomenon is further along than it is in the US, right at utility scale, solar, say, five megawatts and up, or 10 megawatts and up, depending on your definition, it's a moving target, and it varies by company. But anyway, at that scale and up now in Europe and in Asia, 80 to 90% of those projects are being done strictly with string. Here in the US, we're just scratching the surface. I don't know if you have a stat for the percent of new projects that are using string at that scale. Joe,
• 47:22
  Joe Ross: yeah, I still think it's, I don't even know if we're into double digit chat, but we're certainly getting there.
• 47:27
  Joe Ross: And I think part of the the the lagging aspect of that is just really having products available, even, like 600 volt products were pretty new last year. Now we're getting into 800 volt products, and it's, it's balanced system, but it was also a reliable inverter Engine platform in the string format that could operate at that now we have a little bit larger nameplate, our biggest one right now, 350 we're looking at even larger than that, 800 volts. So now there's actually a compelling value proposition for that utility scale where before there really wasn't. So they didn't have much choice but to go to the central inverter. And I think now that kind of message and that understanding and the experience that the owners are having in terms of longevity replacement, O and M and the OPEX, as we've been talking about, advantage of the string converter, is really that that's the future. So you're going to see that, that that market share grow dramatically as we scale our manufacturing. Our 1500 volt products have really only been available for the last four or five years. So now that we're really getting some traction there, people are coming back to us. Our 125 is our best selling inverter, which I remember when that was introduced a number of years ago. It was you guys. We got to sell these things now it's we do. We just can't keep them on the shelf. And that's a 600 volt prox. So that's so it's balance the system catching up.
• 48:51
  Joe Ross: It's a more common footprint, plat AC, 600 volt. And then with that, 800 volt gets you into the larger scale. So now you're really competing with those big central inverter engines. Yeah.
• 49:04
  Joe Ross: And
• 49:07
  Tim Montague: we would be remiss, Joe, if we didn't mention Innovation Day, April 2, I believe right in Dallas, in Dallas. So if you're listening to this and you're curious to get a behind the scenes look at what's going on at CPS America come to Dallas. You can find links anywhere. If you just Google that Innovation Day, CPS America Dallas, you'll find the invitation. The door will close, it will sell out, but it's a wonderful event for so many reasons. So I just want to make sure we put a pin in that. I don't know if you want to share anything about innovation. Yeah, I'm glad
• 49:44
  Joe Ross: you brought it up. And also I just want to mention too, we're going to be at Ari, Boston, at Booth six in a couple weeks, and then obviously, inner solar in San Diego, I'll be there as well.
• 49:54
  Tim Montague: Yeah, what booth are you at in inner solar?
• 49:56
  Tim Montague: Because I don't know if this is going to drop before Boston. Oh, okay.
• 50:00
  Joe Ross: We are at Booth 2117,
• 50:02
  Tim Montague: at inner solar, okay? And I will be at both of those men. So we'll do our best here, Joe to to expedite this, but no promises. That's right around that that's right around the corner, that's February 11,
• 50:15
  Joe Ross: yes, yeah, yeah, in Boston, yeah, I'll be there.
• 50:17
  Joe Ross: It's coming down the park. But just getting back to Innovation Day, I think one of the most impactful pieces of attending that is really meeting the kind of people behind the scene. It's a lot, a lot of times you don't meet our operations people. You don't meet our logistics people.
• 50:32
  Joe Ross: You might talk to Fabiola on the phone, who's going to take care of every problem you could ever have on in an inverter, but to meet her in person, to make that connection, to hand her a business card, to get hers. It's eight years firm. Will go and you'll still have that relationship. You'll know who you're talking to. On the other side, she'll know who you are.
• 50:51
  Joe Ross: It just, it's really, it's really good to just make that connection. We will have innovative products. We'll be really highlighting our new our skids. This is obviously a scale version. This is, if you could picture, a tractor trailer filled with batteries. That's our that's our battery solution, my
• 51:09
  Tim Montague: big one hour battery solution. Yeah, yeah,
• 51:11
  Joe Ross: thanks, Tim, yeah.
• 51:11
  Joe Ross: That'll be on display. We'll be displaying our skids. We'll have the 350s at our factory. We have power sources for for 208, through 800 volt. So you'll see all the inverters powered up.
• 51:23
  Joe Ross: We'll take into the insides, not like you'd ever want to see them. If you are interested, we will show it to you. But really it's the personal connections, and it's the face time with the people that you might not normally.
• 51:37
  Tim Montague: And you get to rub shoulders with engineers, field engineers, technicians. Other business developers, EPCs engineer. It's a wonderful ecosystem of energy professionals, solar professionals, as well as Chint.
• 51:50
  Tim Montague: It's a both end. It's a big event. We're talking upwards of 500 people, I think this year they're expecting, and the the CPS team is, what, just a little bit over 100 now in the US.
• 52:02
  Joe Ross: Yeah, just around there, yeah, right around there, yeah, yeah. In the enthusiasm, you'll see the same enthusiasm that all of our CPS people have, from the warehouse people to our VP of engineering.
• 52:13
  Tim Montague: And I'm, I'm very keen to capture interviews with CPS customers. So if you're listening to this and you want to come on the Clean Power Hour, reach out to me. I'll be recording on site at re plus Boston, at inner solar, at Innovation Day, and, of course, at re plus Vegas. So reach out to me at cleanpowerhour.com, or on LinkedIn. I love hearing from my listeners on LinkedIn. That is my social platform, really. I got into LinkedIn in 2003 I have 23,000 followers on LinkedIn, and of course, please check out our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. That is one of the best things you can do besides telling a friend to check out the show. And with that, Joe, how can our listeners find you.
• 53:04
  Joe Ross: Yeah, we can reach out directly. My contact information is on our website and empower
• 53:09
  Tim Montague: systems com, right, yeah, Thanks, Tim. Power Systems
• 53:13
  Joe Ross: com, yeah, you can reach out. My contact information is there. I'll also be at, you know, every most of the RE shows this year, seek me out there. And also LinkedIn. I don't have as many followers as Tim, but I am also available on that in that format.
• 53:29
  Tim Montague: All right, I want to thank Joe Ross with CPS America for coming on the show.
• 53:32
  Tim Montague: It's been a wild conversation, Joe. I really enjoyed this, and I'll see you in a couple weeks in Boston.
• 53:39
  Joe Ross: Awesome, Tim. All right. Thanks so much for the opportunity. I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage.
• 53:45
  Joe Ross: Amen. You.