The Costco of Solar — Meet the Man Quietly Cutting the Cost of Clean Energy

We are the only organization in the world we know of that can give immediate pricing for every one of these unique activities. So whether it's civil engineering, electrical engineering, substation, engineering, permit applications, etc. We can fix those prices up front for the first time. You're taking all these things that like someone else would have charged $100,000 for and you're like, I just did the math. You're like Costco. You're like, that cost me $1,943. I think I'll just charge a 5% markup on there and just charge people. I'm like, Daniel, you can charge $20,000 for that. Hello, my name is Jigger Shaw and I'm a clean energy entrepreneur. And I'm Jamie Nolan, a clean energy communications executive. And this is energy empire. Hi, Jigger. I haven't seen you in a couple of weeks. I know. Welcome back. How is your health? It's good for anyone who missed the memo. I was so sad. I missed the recording with Catherine Blunt. I contracted Salmonella food poisoning, which like you think is an urban legend. They always tell you to like practice good food safety, but it's real. I'm here to tell you that it's very real and it was extremely unpleasant. So oh my god. But I'm back. I'm 100%. Thanks for covering for me while I was out and I'm excited to talk to Daniel Deuce. Yeah, this morning I had to go to my son's school. They all had to pick an important topic that they wanted to do a presentation on. And of course, my son picked clean energy and why it's so important to get off of fossil fuels. And so like I'm like crying, you know, over at the episode, he created a pop up book of like all these like wind power and title power and solar panels that like popped up and he even had like a detailed presentation on how a solar cell worked. That's awesome. I mean, no surprise, but we may need Dylan to make a little cameo and do us do a show and tell for the audience. I think we. I think we. So cool. Well, Daniel is amazing. I have known Daniel for years. Full disclosure, funny enough. Like one of the other people I work with closely is a guy named Richard Dover and Daniel and Richard don't like each other because they they had like a lawsuit with each other like many years ago. When Daniel was in a previous job and Richard was in a previous job, I don't know whether they buried the hatchet, but I like both Daniel. Well, I'm sure they'll appreciate you airing their dirty laundry jigger on our pond. Go ahead. I mean, that's how we do. But I like Daniel and I like Richard. So it's good. But I think, um, but Daniel is like a class act and we all know that he gives of himself all the time when he does the big solar fight night thing. So I'm really excited to get into all of the things that he does, why he does them. I think I'm here to like yell at him for underpricing his services, which I think he does. I think he provides so much value. He should charge for, but we'll see how he responds. I do love that refrain that you constantly have. And I would say his company, clean tech industry resources, it's one of those companies that when you get the pitch, you're like, why are you not like huge? Why are you not like famous? Why are you not rich? Like it's just one of those concepts that makes so much sense. So I'm really excited to share that with our audience. Yeah, I have no doubt about my mind that one day he will be rich, but I think that you know, what he's doing right now is unlocking real value for solar projects. As many people know, solar has gotten a little bit more expensive actually to install over the last two or three years. And I think his product is getting us back on track to reducing the cost of delivering solar to customers. Absolutely. And it all ties back to energy affordability. And this is just like another company that is doing groundbreaking work and driving down the cost of power. So I'm excited to talk to him. Let's get into it. Energy empire is powered by octopus energy. Natasha, utilities have been pitching demand response for 20 years. Nobody signed up. Who's fault is that? The industries. Those programs were designed for utilities, not people confusing opt-ins, a bill credit you need a forensic accountant to find no feedback ever. That's not a product. That's homework. The utility answer is that customers just don't care about the grid. And they're right. And that's fine. Nobody cares about the grid. People care about what they pay. So stop asking them to care and build something that works on its own. The car charges when powers cheapest thermostat pre-cours before the evening peak. The home battery sells back at the top. And the saving show up where you could actually see them. So the fix isn't another pilot program. It's a product good enough that nobody has to be convinced. Homework gets assigned. Products get chosen. Thanks Natasha Crowe. Vice President of Marketing and Combs, North America, Adaptive Push Energy. Link in the show notes. Daniel Deuce in the flesh. Jigger, it's great to see you. Fantastic. Yeah, very good. It's thought up here in Vermont so excited about that. What do you guys get like 60 days of great weather a year? Max. Max. Oh, no. Probably less. Not the best solar radiation, unfortunately. But everyone loves to come up and stay with you. I'm sure during the like leaf peeping season. Yeah, we have fall and we do have smugglers notch. So we've got some treasures, but they're kind of few and far between sometimes. You get icy skiing up and killing to not this season. This season we got real powder. But that was weird to be clear. Yeah, that was very great. You think it's bad skiing up there. You should try hanging out with us in like a Pennsylvania or Virginia. That's a great way to break something. Yeah, I've got to place up in deep creek lake and we have a ski resort called Wisp, which I don't know that I can technically be called a ski resort. But Daniel, we're going to jump right in because you have an incredible story and I would like to get into it. So like just to start, you're the fourth generation of your family to work in energy, right? You're a great grandfather. It was a coal mine engineer who became president of Michigan Tech University. Your grandfather built power transformers of general electric like three generations of building the system and you're the one that pivoted into renewables, right? And ended up the second person in the US to reach a gigawatt of solar PPAs after me, obviously. And so like what did watching your family work the energy industry teach you that carried you into C.I.R.? Yes. Yes. You know, I usually don't tell all of my renewable energy friends about my coal like family legacy, but thanks for doing that, sugar. I appreciate it. You're like an energy nepot baby Daniels, what are you telling us? Evidently. I remember when my peers in middle school were going to as they should have baseball camp and soccer camp. I went to Michigan Tech mechanical engineering camp. So you can imagine that was a fun party. But and then going into the 125,000 square foot library, which is named after my great grandfather and seeing it filled with energy knowledge, right? Energy industry knowledge. It's definitely set the stage and seeing the transformer building two million square feet that my grandfather built power transformers in. It certainly gave me the feeling that humans can do really big things, right? And I just wanted to be part of it. Well, you know, I protested the Michigan Tech coal plant. So there you go. You really? Oh, yeah. I went to Illinois, right? But all of us had a coal plant that like was adjoining the university that then, you know, was like a co gen facility, right? So you would take the heat off the coal plant and heat and cool all the buildings and yeah, coal kept the lights on for a long time. We no longer need it. If great grandpa was around today, he would certainly be a solar engineer. I never know doubt about that. I love that. And so give me the origin story of CIR, right? Because you used to run a Donnie's solar business in the US. And like, I mean, there's a little bit of an origin story between the two, right? Yes, absolutely. Working within a Donnie was pretty amazing. This is an organization that signed the world's largest PPA at the time of eight gigawatts commission. The world's largest wind solar hybrid park of 1.6 gigawatts. Earlier this week, they just announced they've commissioned the largest battery outside of China, 3.4 gigawatt hours. So that's the scale of the projects and the complexity of the projects that's happening there. 10X the United States and that my team has worked on. And so we acquired a Donnie's US business, the intellectual property there and spun it out into what is now CIR. So direct outcome from what I had ranked before we left as the world's largest global solar developer. So quite a spin-out story. And remind me what CIR stands for. Clean tech industry resources. Yes. All right. There we go. The most generic possible name because we don't care about our brand. We care about serving the industry. So not super important that we have a memorable brand, I guess. We're going to fix that. Yeah. I'm like, we brands always there. Always always available to you, Daniel. Okay. So you just you describe CIR as the world's only Amazon style service store for complex energy professional services to include site visits, diligence, energy modeling, permitting grid studies, merger and acquisition support, construction management, et cetera, et cetera, all at fixed global pricing. So for a listener who's never thought about energy project development, as a storefront, explain what you actually built. Like, what does a customer literally do when they show up? - My inability to answer that question in a simple, clean way is actually one of the cores to the value we've created because it's really a choose your own adventure story, right? We have clients that can come and purchase a single energy generation model or they can retain us to deliver a gigawatt scale battery to NTP immediately, right? With zero lag, no bid time, et cetera, just straight into execution. And so it varies by client and their individual needs, their internal bandwidth, external bandwidth, where their bottlenecks are in that moment. We can apply bandwidth to support them and accelerate in exactly that location in that way. - It's almost like they're like separate modules and so you can like go little or you can go big, like depending on your needs. Any system size, yeah. Any system size globally. - But let me get into my pet peeve 'cause I think your storytelling is terrible Daniel. - Yeah. - So like, let me learn where the right now. - Let me get right into this 'cause like the thing that I find fascinating about what you do is that, so number one, the reason you have this business as I can tell is that Adani is basically obsessed with doing everything in-house. So as a result, like you are not allowed to hire any external consultants. And so you had to do everything in-house from geotechnical reports to interconnection studies to all this other stuff. And so as a result, you inherited a team of like 100 people in India who were experts in esoteric reports or whatever for US projects, right? And so that's why you have all of the people that you have, because they sort of were forced to become experts in like each individual thing in the US, right? And that's really what you're renting out. And then the next stage, as I understand it was, all these companies came through powerhouse, right? And other like incubators. And they all basically created their own little app that like made their part of solar more efficient. Nobody obviously wanted to have 74 apps. But you decided to license all 74 apps, right? And like, figure out how to become an expert at all of them and like help people do things more efficiently, right? Today you've realized that half of them are garbage and so like you only have like 37 apps, right? But you started with all of them just to see like whether you could figure that, right? And now you're sort of at a point where you can do everything for everybody. But in some ways, when you say that you can do everything for everybody, it's even more confusing, right? Because in some ways you kind of need to say, we have the like deluxe car wash, the simple car wash, the car wash with waxing, the car wash with like, you know, the interior like, you know, detailing, et cetera. Like I feel like you need false packages, even though you have the ability to do all of it. - Yeah, and we do in our latest pricing calculators, we do have a fixed price to NTP, any solar or battery project globally. So that's literally full performance of the development work. But we also do any slice of that entire process for unique clients. And we don't really care which it is. Some clients we build two or $300 a month, two some clients we build $150,000 a month to task come in one side of the organization and work product and execution happens. So our execution framework is the same for all of those clients regardless of scale and scope. But I agree, yeah, it's very, very hard to tell that story. It's extremely hard. - Well, Jigger just told it for you. - You did. - So all you need to do in Daniel is just take the transcript from this conversation and turn that into your, like everyone loves an exciting origin story. Like you can count on Jigger to be like, this is like, I get in trouble with my husband for doing this, he'll tell a story and I'll be like, listening and I'll be like, well, what really happened is and then I'll retell the story. I have gotten scolded so much about that. - I'm sure you love that. - But I try not to do that now. But that's basically what Jigger did. But I mean, you're a CEO, so that's going to help you. Perceived less positively by my husband, I think. - But. - Well, you know, like that's what Jamie and I do. We jazz it up. - Yes, it's true. But that's what we're here for. - So now you've gone out in the world and you've pitched the top 100 solar developers, right? And NTP for those folks who are following along is noticed to proceed. So that's all of the steps required to start construction, basically, right? - And finally, yeah. - And you've gone to all of those people and you've captured, I think, what, 20 of the top 100 are now? - 25% on class, yeah. - That's pretty amazing. And most of that I think has been accomplished in the last 12 months. - It is, yes. We now have over 250 clients. So it's a more than 50% of those in the last 12 months. They were adding a new client every other day. We have a single United States sales representative, essentially. - That's wild. - So, yeah. Yeah, we cannot onboard folks any faster than we are, essentially. We're being governed by our bolting on bandwidth just to do more of what we're already doing. But it's a strange time to be in such a good place. But I guess we just knock on wood and call it a day. - So you've said that CIR has commoditized roughly 95% of the activities it takes to advance an energy project. For someone in the industry hearing that number for the first time, what has commoditized actually mean in practice? Like what is the work now that wasn't standardized before? - Almost none of it, Jamie. We're the only organization in the world we know of that can give immediate pricing for every one of these unique activities. So whether it's civil engineering, electrical engineering, substation, engineering, whether it's permit applications, et cetera, we can fix those prices up front for the first time. And so 95% of these activities to get projects to construction and finance readiness are commoditized in our process. The 5% that are not there are the boots on the site portions of the site studies. The majority of environmental assessments, wetland lineations, these things are actually desktop and we've commoditized all of those. But the site specific screening, we will scope them, RFP them, we'll collect a dozen bids and provide them at cost to our clients, but they're not yet commoditized. - You're taking all these things that like someone else would have charged $100,000 for and you're like, I just did the math, it's like, you're like Costco, you're like, that cost me $1,943. I don't think you'll just charge a 5% markup on there and just charge people. They're like, no, I think I'm just gonna take the cost of like, working up 5% like, charge my client that. - You know me well and you know that if I could give our services away for free to advance clean energy projects, I would. Yes, you I do. - I love that. I love that, Daniel. As someone who, Jigger who likes to tell me that I'm too generous and I wanna pay people too much and I can't help it, you can't turn it off. - It is the mission that often comes first. - So, Daniel, can you give us a concrete example here of like a price comparison of what a project may cost working through CIR versus like the standard process? - Sure, of course. I like to use the DOE has a PV system cost analysis. I think the last one was refreshed in 2024. And if you look at that soft costs are about 17 to 19 cents per watt for a 100 megawatt DC project. Our cost to NTP, 100 megawatt DC project is 1.52 cents. That includes full systems engineering. Most folks can't even get just the engineering done for that number. So that's the magnitude of the advantage. - All right, so we were talking about how you were able to commoditize 95% of this process. So what is it that's in the 5% that you cannot commoditize? And what does that 5% that's remaining? Tell us about where the industry still needs human judgment. - Yeah, what's interesting is we actually have commoditized the human and the loop portion of all of our workflows. So they're heavily software dependent, but they also have subject matter experts in every workflow controlling the quality and advancing those in real time. So where we need the human and the loop falls into a few categories. One is, I would just call it generally EQ or emotional quotient. People convincing other people to do things, right? Bob, the fire marshal is going to have personal opinions that have nothing to do with the code every time. And you have to be ready to either educate Bob or agree with Bob and update and refresh your engineering technical work procurement, et cetera, or come up with some type of a settlement and negotiate with Bob for a settled negotiation. And by the way, Bob is not gonna answer his telephone. He's only going to respond if you show up in person with a large box of donuts. And so that is extremely important. - Fruit basket, Daniel, fruit basket. - Much healthier, much healthier. - So you're saying stakeholder engagement, community engagement, essentially communications and marketing functions where you have to actually build trust with people, cannot be based with replaceable connections. - And also the other major bucket is simply liability. We're in constant touch with professional licensing boards. And if you ask them licensed civil, structural, electrical, financial, advisory, legal, bars, etc. If you ask them if they are prepared to give any AI a license, they will laugh at you. Right? And that is not about to change anytime soon. These are human boards. So therefore, you must have the human and the loop to take full liability for any and all decisions and actions. And we don't see that changing. So that's where we spend a lot of our time and focus. So the other thing I was thinking about is you started off the company with like a license to all these different apps from all these companies around the country who are trying to make each one of these component parts more efficient. But now we have AI, right? And so you publicly announce that you're going to try to have 1,750 AI agents in place by the end of this year. You have a Google AI lead that like you've been working with for the past two and a half years to guide you around what was possible, right? So help us understand the apps that you were using before. And then the agents you're putting in now, whether any of them interact with each other, are they replacing the apps? Do they do some other function like, like how does AI really help make this all happen? Yeah, it's a great question. And we still have over 52 different enterprise level third party tools that are fantastic. Of course we have PV case and PV roof and DNVGL solar compass, homergrids, ND, and on and on and on. Right. And then we have expert operators in each of those tools where we have our AI agents working is on the automation and acceleration and improvement of the human workflows that advance any one of these unique disciplines. And so for example, the AI data room diligence process that we acquired from Richard Mutsui, we now have over 25 different highly trained specialized AI agents executing that process to identify risk in various data rooms and compile key information and make it actionable. And so you, but you're certainly right in that we've gone from sort of passive software tools now to tools that can act on our behalf. And so that's really where we're spending a ton of time, of course. And for us, these work everywhere from generating meeting minutes immediately following a call to initial pricing and cost estimation for projects. All of which go through a highly expert subject matter, but reducing the time that it takes them to prepare and assess and analyze these things. There is not a single workflow in the organization that's not touched by AI automation and software zero. I saw Jamie just perk up there. Are you replacing her fireflies meeting notes, you know, app here. We also use fireflies. We like fireflies. Okay. I just got I had I did have a client refer me to another tool yesterday. So we'll have to have to try that out. Also love the shout out to Richard Matt Soui, who I have to point out was our colleague at the one program's office. So I rich. If you hear this. Okay, Daniel. So here's the question. You owe us an honor, an honest answer to you. Kind of already suggested as such. But you've said that the commoditization of knowledge work isn't a future threat. It's already happened. And I think that you're kind of explaining that as you're talking about the structure of your company and how it works. But for the energy engineers and developers listening right now, what you've built is essentially a eulogy for the way their jobs used to work, like how things were done. So what is your honest case to that workforce? What should they be doing with the next 10 years of their careers? It is the number one pushback that we get from teams that we want to or are working with on occasion. They see our process or process our workflows. And they think they're just going to get fired tomorrow. Right. We had one engineer tell us sometime back that he was not even going to present our quote to his management because he said, quote, I would look like an idiot for all the money I've been spending on the scope for the rest of the portfolio. And so of course that's the wrong response. And the right response is that this is absolutely a jeven's paradox moment for a noble energy. If you can reduce as we can the cost of delivered assets by 20 to 30%. Then we only increase the demand for solar across homes, businesses and utilities. And so there is no shortage of work to be done and employment to be had in that dramatic growth scenario. If we all tighten the belt, get more efficient faster. And we continue to widen the gap of what the cost and price of our energy in the market versus alternatives. Right. So that is our entire thinking. And by the way, if anyone would like to talk about working for us, please call me. Well, that's what I keep telling people to ask me this is I'm just like, you know, these are all of the tasks that nobody wanted to do. Like it was painstaking work. You had to figure out where the mistake was. It was like a where's Waldo. You know, effort because you had this like complicated drawing. You're like, are we sure that it's correct and what part is not correct or whatever. Now you have an EI agent that can tell you exactly whether it's correct or not. And like and then highlight the parts that you should just look at more carefully. I totally agree with you. I feel like this is going to allow us to 10X the amount of solar that we deploy, which is what we need to do in this moment. One question I had though on this is really just how do we restate what I just said to humans, right? Like what part of their job is AI and what part of their job is them. And how do they feel like that part of what they have to do continues to be important. And so that's where their judgment continues to be important, right? The like the AI is there to assist them. Right? I mean, because you know, Jensen Huang talks about this all the time, right? That like that when Microsoft Excel came out, it wasn't like everybody who did spreadsheets manually like lost their job. Like in fact, tens of thousands of additional people got hired to do more spreadsheets. Right? And so like so I feel like everyone thinks that AI is coming for their job instead of thinking the AI is going to be a tool that helps them do their job more effectively. What I think is important for us all to remember is that we have all been subject to way too much data and plenty of great advice for a really long time. It was all just one Google search away. Subject matter experts have been dumping it online for years and years. So yes, AI now gives us a million times more data and analysis and great advice. It still has to be actuated in the physical world. It still has to be turned into action. And so that's where we lack the, I think fear that exists often in the market. What are AI advisors point out to us is that AI is going to and has already started inventing amazing new medical devices, technologies, etc. Those require factories to be built. They require sales teams to be sold. They require human relationships to be deployed. They require electricians in the field. Right. And so the number of new technologies and advancements that we're looking at, including in our field is going to be substantial and require humans to execute bottom line. Daniel, you're one of the six founders of the solar fight club, which has grown solar fight night into one of the largest renewable energy fundraisers in the world. 22 events more than 14,000 attendees over 1.8 million raised to date for clean energy nonprofits. I know it's the party of the year for the renewable energy industry every year at R.A. Plus, I never miss it. Jigger and I have gone been going together for years now for listeners who have never been to one what actually happens at a solar fight night and why does this scene exist in clean tack? Well, what actually happens at fight night? I guess in Vegas last year, I had a sway pool performer representing wind. I had synchronized swimmers representing hydrogen. I had a guy running around in a tinfoil hat with a Pinocchio nose talking about how windmills kill whales. And I had a joker running around giving people terrorists for absolutely no reason like your shirts too red pay a tear. That's hilarious. So yeah, so we have fun with what's happening in the moment because sometimes if you don't laugh, you cry. But at its core fight night has the exact same mission it's always had, which is to celebrate the industry and the people that are making this transition happen that are fighting for a cleaner future and to make the human connections that get projects done, right? That mission remains to this day. It's the best networking event in the industry in my opinion. And that is fight night in a nutshell. All right, take me to the bar. How did the six of you get together? And what was it like when you came up with the idea? So the original idea was from Todd Friedman now development at altis. And it was about survival back then, right? In 2008, it was about how to not go bankrupt or leave the industry. My first two years in solar, I made exactly zero dollars. And so that's what we were talking about. How are we going to get the first projects that we were getting signed? How are we going to get them done? I'll never forget I showed up and I was. talking about how I'd signed 100 kilowatt PPA with the City of Santa Monica. And everyone was like 100 kilowatts. Like how are you ever going to do that? Right? It's massive. And so that that's that was really the genesis. And of course, we all know that we have more passion in this industry than others. I think Jamie were alluding to why does such an event exist in the clean tech space versus maybe some others. So for fun, if you Google non-profit fundraising event for oil and gas non-profits, you will come up with exactly zero. So it's not as if there is much competition. And I think it really comes down to the core, hard and soul of our industry being more than just an economic initiative, but a moral and imperative as well. So I think that's why solar finance exists. Can you give a quick shout out to one of what group use I know every year you support a different non-profit organization, but either the group you're supporting this year or one that stands out to you from the last few years. This year we are promoting our leading industry advocates because as Jager likes to point out, political power is our first, second and third priority. And so we are supporting solar energy industries, association, SEA. We're supporting both solar and solar. It is the leader at the state level. Of course, SEA is the leader at the national level. And we're supporting run on climate, which is a leader at getting mayoral and county government candidates elected who are pro climate. And that's where we see a lot of projects dying these days, locally, hyper locally. So huge fan of their work, especially. So now let's turn this back to capitalism. And so, so CIR actually gets a lot out of solar fight night. So like I'm not suggesting you started it for this purpose, but now that you have like a party that everybody wants to get into that gets sold out, you have a VIP line and also stuff like how do you guys use this strategically to get more customers to notice CIR and in the door and all that stuff? It's a great question. Actually, no one has ever asked me this question before. So but people have asked me, why do you have you spent a thousand hours arranging or and coordinating and executing solar fight night over the years for zero dollars, right? That's a that's a perfectly reasonable question. And there's certainly an element of it just gives me hope in humanity. Again, we go through the year. We read all these terrible headlines about all these stupid things we're doing as a species. But you go to fight night and you remember that there are so many good people doing such good work. And that is more valuable than the almighty dollar sometimes. Now, going back to capitalism, Jigger, it is a secret sauce item for CIR. Although I've never taken the mic and spoken about CIR who runs and manages and execute the the event or myself. For one concrete example of the outcomes here, we have everyone's contact information. We have 63,000 contacts for every vendor on planet Earth globally. And so when we support our clients in executing procurement activities on average or clients internal teams might go to three to five bidders. On average, we go to 150 bidder organizations. And we have everyone's personal Gmail addresses because of fight night. Thank you. And so we're able to get to them and make sure that they're responding to opportunities that fits with their scope. So on average, we're able to drive procurement costs down by three to five percent, even at the 100 or megawatt or gigawatt scale project. That's a lot of cash and value to our clients. And probably a full third of our clients have come from being in touch with folks just outside of the commercial relationship focus, right? It just gives us something to connect with. There are two few opportunities for us to connect as humans these days outside of a commercial environment, right? Everything is an ad. And solar fight night is the opposite of that. I invite every one of our competitors into to the event to celebrate the industry because it's about all of us. Awesome. I love that so much. So you've also launched Clean Tech fact check through solar fight night, which is a platform built specifically to push back on misinformation and clean energy. You've said critical decisions in this industry are getting made on incomplete or misleading information, which I think we can all agree with. So what's the piece of misinformation that Clean Tech fact check is built to take down right now? And who's the audience that you're trying to reach with that beyond just our colleagues in the industry? Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm trying to stop calling it misinformation and just call it lies. They're lies. This is really the truth of the matter. And it's it's ironically one of the great disadvantages of our industry is that our executive teams are moral and would never lie. I do not know a single renewable energy industry executive who would get on and lie. For example, like the colabii saying that pollution is good for us. For example, now we've database dozens and dozens of these lies and then prepared well researched scientific responses as well as comedic responses. If that's what you want to respond with, we've also databaseed all the industry videos of every farmer who's farm the industry saved every homeowner who's put panels on their roof and wants to brag about their zero dollar energy bill. So that folks can access those videos and respond wherever they are. We've databaseed where those folks are and those stories come from. So there's a repository of responses to the lies and misinformation in real time. So because it can take a long time to research and respond and reply. So instead you can go to cleantechfactcheck.org immediately search find the lie cut and paste response of your choosing because we just have to be in the mix on the discussion. That's an awesome resource that I have. I am embarrassed to admit that I didn't know that it existed, but I'm going to go check it out right after this brand new brand. We launched yeah, two weeks ago. So awesome. Great. Yeah. All right. We'll definitely have to put that in the show notes as well as a link to where folks can go to potentially become a customer of CIR because I mean, I think if they if you listen to this episode, if you're in the market for any of these services, the value prop here is just completely undeniable. Last question on my side. Are you plus got pushed out to the November this year in Vegas? I think it's the same week as the F1 race. So that's going to be crazy. And so like where is solar fight night? Is the F1 race also in Vegas? It is. And it's that Thursday of that week. And so I'm out on Wednesday this year. I believe better. I'll go make our hotel reservations now. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Immediately. I did notice that our sweet booking was 50% more when we booked it last month. And I thought it was just for the conference, but that makes much more sense. I think the F1 set probably has a little more cash to spend on on fancy hotel rooms that our renewable energy industry friends do. We are at the same venue, Zook Knight Club, IUD Club. I want to say it's a 3,500 plus person venue. Really nice, super, super high tech. And we're going to have a lot of fun. And hopefully, I'm going to knock on wood after the recording here. Hopefully we'll be celebrating the midterms, right? That's what that's really high energy. You definitely want a lot of clean energy champions to win their seat in midterms. Absolutely. Well, we can't wait to see it. Solar Fight Night Daniel will be there. Yes, we're doing one at ACP two three a year now. Amazing. Well, thanks for coming on, Daniel. And thanks for all the great work you've done for years for our industry. It really is important and just a reminder, double your prices. He does this to me too. It's just a never-ending. Peridox, Jigger. Jeverid's Peridox. Right. Our conversion rate from a cold call to a client is 60 plus percent for a reason. Right? So there's some upside in being aggressive on our pricing structures. I love it. Thanks Daniel. Thanks. Energy Empire is supported by S2G investments. If you haven't checked out their podcast, I highly recommend it. They have a great recent episode on the long-term effects of the Iran war and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. In the episode, Sunjeev Krishnan, Franco Sullivan, and Bala Nagarajan make a compelling case that this disruption could be the most powerful accelerant for renewable energy in a generation. And in future episodes, they'll be exploring how those forces are reshaping our food systems and ocean intelligence. Sound interesting? Go find the S2G podcast and start with the global energy order has changed. Now what? Well, that was fun. Yes. So great to talk to Daniel. He's really inspiring. He's one of those people who is absolutely driving change in our sector with an incredible company that is driving on the cost of power and just making our, you know, these services and this generation so much more scalable in a really powerful way. So I can't wait to see what they do next. But it is kind of hilarious that he is not at all a self-promoter. He's not. I mean, it was funny to me when you were kind of like, I'm going to retell that story for you. I mean, I really hope that he takes that to heart because he should chew his own horn a little bit and it doesn't come naturally to to some people. But then in other places, I thought he was really eloquent. Like he had a really great response on, like some of the workforce issues related to AI adoption in the sector. And he really understands like the human element of the work and how important the trust building is. And just there's so much heart in what he's doing like with solar fight night and all of his nonprofit work. So it was great to get to know him a little bit more. - Oh, he clearly cares. I mean, that's when he lights up. Is he really cares when he's talking about others? And he clearly like clams up when he wants, when I'd like ask him to talk about himself. I'm like, no, I want you to talk more about yourself. - Yep, yep. He's obviously like so many of us in the sector really cares about climate and is like here to just do well by doing good. - Well, and I'm super excited to see how the tools that he's put together really can reduce the cost of the soft costs on solar. I mean, I was shocked by his numbers where he was like, it's like 17 and 19 cents per watt on the cost of installing a solar project, although soft costs and he's reducing them down to, I think he's in 1.52 cents. - Yeah, wild. Like significantly greater cross cost reductions than I anticipated he would be able to tangibly demonstrate. I don't see any reason why anyone who wasn't in the market for any of those services wouldn't be reaching out to CIR after listening to this episode. Like the value is just absolutely untenable. - Well, we're gonna put a link I'm sharing the show notes and folks should click on it and make sure that they start saving money. I mean, it's important. - Totally. And then also for my other comms and marketing folks that I know you're listening to this podcast, definitely also go check out Clean Tech Fact Check, which is the new website that Daniel mentioned just launched a few weeks ago. I am gonna go check it out and post on LinkedIn about it. Can't wait. Do you know next up the Ask Jigger segment that is sponsored by our friends at Act to Post Energy? - Oh, I can't wait. I'm really excited. (singing) Welcome to Ask Jigger. Our weekly segment where Jigger answers your questions about energy or anything else you're wondering about. Huge thanks to our sponsor, Act to Post Energy for making the segment possible. Before we get into this week's questions, a bit of news, we have a brand new merch shop. Very excited about it. Right now it's Energy Empire merch, but we have plans to add more general energy merch. So definitely send us your ideas for what you wanna see. And to celebrate anyone who sends in a question that Jigger answers on the show gets an Energy Empire hat. So send 'em in. All right, let's get to it, Jigger. Our first question comes from Darren Laman and Darren says, "Jigger, I've spent a lot of time on residential roofs, installing solar panels and all the electrical work that makes the system run." So here's what I can't figure out. Data centers keep citing these massive new power needs. So why isn't on-site solar and battery storage are routine part of their plans? I get that rooftop and ground-mount solar plus batteries won't cover all of their load, but it boggles my mind that the cheapest new generation we have isn't standard in the build out. Why not? - It is such a good point, but basically, it is the battery that matters, not the solar, right? And so what happens when a data center comes to town is that they use up a lot of the excess capacity and it's left in the grid. And so if you can put everybody on that circuit on batteries and that when there's like a grid crisis or some sort of emergency, you actually take those loads and have them run off the battery, that frees up capacity for the data center. And what a lot of the experts are saying is that if you give local residents free stuff, meaning a battery and then maybe a solar system to refuel the battery, then they suddenly love the data center. And it's less than 0.1% of the cost of a new data center to provide all of those batteries to those residential customers. And so I totally agree with you that residential solar and battery storage should be part of the solution. One other fun fact, we have about six million residential solar systems in the United States that represents maybe 10% a little less of all of the single family residential systems houses in the country. I think Australia is over 40%, maybe 50% of their rooftops with solar on it. So if we just matched Australia, we would free up so much capacity that we could say yes to all of the data centers and reduce everybody's bills by 10%. - Whoa, those are some big numbers. I mean, I think we understand what the solution is, but why are the hyperscalers not hip to this? Why aren't they doing it? - Because the people who understand the grit are not the people who are trying to move fast and break things. And so part of this is actually forcing the people who move fast and break things to understand that their way isn't working, right? I mean, like 70% of all the data centers are supposed to be online this year are delayed. They're not even under construction yet. And so their way is not going fast. They have to move a little more slowly to go fast later. And a lot of the energy experts who work for the hyperscalers know what the right answer is. But people aren't listening to them. So keep beating up the hyperscalers. They'll do the right thing eventually. - Ooh, all right, hot take. Our next question comes from David Savage. And David says, "Jigger, I'm a staffer at a Public Utilities Commission. I'm so happy you're here, David. Thank you for listening to the podcast." You've talked a lot about the need for commissions to be more proactive. And I wonder where you think the balance lies between a commission taking action on its own versus needing to be empowered to act by the state legislature? - It's a great question. And one that we struggle with all the time, you know, I think that commissions do, I think, have the right to say and to nudge utilities in the right direction and say, "Hey, it'd be good to get more out of the grid "we've already paid for using grid enhancing technologies "and virtual power plants." But for a lot of utility commissions, they view themselves as judicial bodies, right? And so the utility goes forward and says, "Here's our Integrated Resource Plan "or here's our rate recovery request." And folks have to go through and say, "Here's what's prudent, here's what's not prudent." They're not really supposed to tell utility companies how to operate their grid. So they want air cover from the state legislators to say, "Hey, you have to achieve this higher "grid utilization, which is what passed in Virginia. "There's other states that are looking to do the same thing "to give their commissions air cover." But I would suggest if you look at what Dan Scripps has done in Michigan, he's absolutely set to consumers in DTE. Hey, I am not looking at any more of your rate requests unless you pair it with whether this particular project could have been done cheaper with a virtual power plant or a great enhancing technologies. And so I do think that kind of boldness is something commissions have the legal right to do, but totally agree with you that most commissioners don't feel like they have the air cover from their governors or their state legislators to be that bold. - So what's the solution? - Well, some of the folks have been bold, right? The Minnesota Commission, the Michigan Commission, but others have been bold like our friend Marissa over in Connecticut and she lost her job over being bold, right? And the governor didn't have her back, right? And so you see a variety of different approaches, but part of the reason why we're trying to get bills passed across the country to explicitly require higher gradualization is to give people air cover, right? And to send a signal directly from the state legislators to the utilities saying, we're watching you, you need to do things that are in the best interests of ratepayers, not just the data centers and shareholders, which is what everybody's accusing them of. - Absolutely, and I'd actually add that if you're interested in this topic, you should check out the work being done by the utilized coalition as well as deploy action. Those are both groups that are working at the state level to try and get more legislation passed and potentially put together some model legislation around grade utilization. So thanks for the question. That was a really good one. Okay, our next question comes from Steven Scarpula. And Steven says, "Jigger, I'm a finance professional and listening to the show has me seriously considering a career change to help move the energy transition forward." Two questions. What's your advice for someone making that jump from finance? And are there specific people in the industry I should be reaching out to? - Well, it's a great question. And one that, you know, I don't know that I know which place you should jump into from finance, but finance is a great place to jump from. But there's a lot of important roles in our industry. I mean, the beauty and Jamie, you know this better than I do. The value of marketing and comms is super important. The value of construction management is super important. There's a lot of folks that are figuring out how to use next generation AI tools to reduce the cost of building new plants. There are folks who become experts in working with regulators and policymakers to be able to educate them on finance-related issues and how money views certainty or uncertainty or some of those other things. And so I think that no matter what you want to do, there's room for you in the industry. It's so diverse. - Absolutely. And I would add, there are lots of finance jobs in this industry as well. I mean, I'm sitting here today at the offices of galvanized climate solutions. They're working in the space, jiggers, former firm, generate capital. I mean, there are a lot of similar types of groups that work at the intersection of clean energy and finance, so it can be done. Definitely take the leap and you won't regret it. It's very, very rewarding gratifying work. Okay, our last question comes from Arjun Meta and he says, "Jigger, you spend all day telling the rest of us to electrify everything." So I have to ask what's actually in your house. Uh-oh, he wants you set up. Solar on the roof, heat pump, what do you got? What are you working with? So, I've got two houses, one in Bethesda, Maryland, and the way of a vacation place up in Deep Creek, Lake, Maryland. The one in Bethesda has a lot of tree cover on the roof, and so I've had it fully mapped and found the like little slivers of places where the sun consistently shines, and I put two kilowatts of solar there, so I've done that, right? My house, I ripped out the natural gas heating and cooling systems to put in heat pumps, and so we're all heat pumps. I've got a natural gas water heater, and so I'm waiting for that to kick it before I replace it, and I have natural gas stove, which will never die. I'm sure the stove will last for years, and so we'll see when we can actually shut off that. At the vacation house, though, we actually built that from scratch, and so that's an all-electric house, or there is no natural gas service at that house. It is super energy efficient. One of the most energy efficient homes in Garacani in Maryland, and so we actually need to bring in fresh air so that the air is rotating. It's got induction stove, it's got a heat pump, it's got, I think, almost 16 kilowatts of solar on the roof, and so if the end of days comes, I'm going to be able to be a prepper in that house, along with my two EV chargers that I've had installed there. So all my neighbors know that if something bad happens, they can hang out of my house. Rad, I want to know more about the setup and deep creek lake. I am looking forward to visiting your home there this summer, when I also will just coincidentally be in deep creek lake to see your setup, because that sounds so cool. All right, so that's all for Ask to Gure this week. Remember, you can send in your own questions, and like I said, if yours gets picked, we'll send you an energy empire hat. The links in the show notes. Thanks for listening, as always. You can find us at energyempire.fm and wherever you get your podcasts. If you've got a second, please leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and also subscribe on YouTube, because that helps new listeners discover the show. Thank you.