David Mack: Solar O&M, Rural Growth and Resilience
UK’s First Nationally Significant Solar Farm - Clark Frost
Valerio Pelizzi: Agrivoltaics, C&I and Grid
Nick Spicer: Your Eco, Commercial Solar Projects
Erin Mahan: Sunspec Alliance
Matthew Xenakis: UK Market Update November 2024
Valerio Pelizzi: Solar Energy Innovation and Leadership
Rob Tippett: Challenges and Opportunities in Solar O&M and RePowering
Vince Barnes: From Polaris Nuclear Submarines to Solar Project Development
Dathan Eldridge: A Fearless Solar Troubleshooter and Builder
John Davies: On a Mission to Establish Solar Excellence
Brett Baber: From the Army to Award-Winning Leadership in Solar Energy
Dr. Jyoti Roy: From Humble Beginnings to Solar Visionary, Technical Advisor for Industrial and Large-Scale Solar
Arnoud Klaren: Unlocking Solar Success, Insights from a Seasoned Technical Director in Investment and Asset Management
Stefano Girolami: An Inspiring Journey in PV, Jumping Straight into the Deep End
Clive Cosby: Constructing The Largest Solar Farms
Guy Atherton: Solar PV Expert & Developer
Matthew Xenakis: Perspectives from Solar Panel Manufacturers
Vikram (00:01.742) Welcome to the Future of Solar Photovoltaics podcast. My name is Vikram Kumar. We are now being listened to in over 91 countries. We’re getting a tremendous following in the utility scale and engineering sector in solar, in batteries, in EVs, in grid connection, specifically in solar, EPC, O&M and development. Today, I’ve got the absolute pleasure of having
one of the best O&M specialists in the industry with probably close to 40 % market share in large scale O&M but he can correct that himself. Specifically, this is following on from Mr. Clark Frost yesterday and the Heathcote Holdings team, who are one of the major contractors from Cleve Hill Solar Farm. So today I’ve got the absolute pleasure of welcoming Mr. David Mack to our podcast. David, welcome.
David (00:56.302) Good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Vikram (00:58.146) Fantastic. Do want to start like with the other guests, by introducing yourself, by speaking about your early life, your background?
David (01:05.644) Yes, no problem. I’m David Mack. I’m the CEO of a group of companies that provide services to utility scales solar accross the UK, Ireland and the USA. I began early life being surrounded by…
renewable energy. My parents, grandparents were very interested and relatively pioneering at the time in supporting wind and then solar, landfill gas off opportunities that were found on my family farm. And I think wind was something that was stuck in my mind from an early age because unfortunately during a…
fight for a four turbine wind project on our family farm in North Norfolk. My mum passed away and then my dad focused his efforts on making sure that his farm business was working and myself and my other three brothers were looked after okay. it almost felt like a pivotal thing in my life where I thought something my mother had and father wanted to do, my mother was no longer there, my dad had to forget that because he had his other focuses. So I always
remembered that and then once I was old enough to start to think about career options and during my university life where, funnily enough, I studied music, not renewable, a slight tangent off into renewable energy. I started looking at opportunities for wind in doing that, found opportunities to develop solar as well and developed and delivered a number of wind
and solar projects, all pretty small scale, certainly by today’s standards. And that led us to the point where we started Everblue in 2015. And then that’s when we got into the operation and maintenance side of business. But yeah, that’s, I suppose, a brief summary of the journey that took me from childhood to solar.
Vikram (03:17.038) So David, know, Bereavement is a terrible thing. You know, I’m sorry to hear that. And one of the negatives about being so focused, know, being solar and cabling for 20 years, the podcast that was a bit of fun because, you know, mental health is a big thing in the industry. You know, life’s not only about making money, you know, being locked up in a bedroom office by yourself or in a corner somewhere. So, you know, there’s a few people I know that going through bereavement counseling right now. You know, you think you know someone.
and then you really get to know them and your whole perspective changes. I want to ask you specifically, how old were you when you were with the unfortunate passing of your mother and what did you do in terms of education? When did you get into music? Why did you drop out of music? And when did you decide you want to get into wind turbines?
David (04:06.498) So my mother passed away when I was 8 so quite young, she was only 33. And I suppose, as I said, the trigger for me being interested in renewables was the memory of her and my father pursuing wind. I was old enough for at 8 to remember some of those conversations and meetings they were having and their excitement around it. I suppose that it took it from something that was interesting.
Well, it could be of an interest to me to something that was Ingrained in my family history. was something my mum believed in.
So I suppose it then took me, being a kid and growing up, to then start to think about it in my late teens. And that’s when I got into, started that project again, that very project that my mother and father had started in about 1990, I believe. We then started up again when I was in my late teens, as I said.
And that sort of stayed bubbling away in the background through three public inquiries, two high court hearings. It was a really contentious project for a single stick wind turbine scheme. It’s just under a megawatt. And we then did all sorts of other things. Solar started Everblue and behind the scenes that was carrying on.
Vikram (05:24.598) Right.
David (05:36.334) We got permission in think 2020 and built it in 2022. So it took from 1990 to 2022 to deliver a single wind turbine project. But it was amazing to deliver that and to see it running now being something that was started by my mother and father and delivering that.
It quite a lot. was quite an emotional thing to see the cranes putting it up on the day. was incredible.
Vikram (06:04.754) Fantastic 8 is a very young age to to lose a family member, you know and in fact my company Ventus means wind in Latin because my idea was to get into the wind business and and my early experiences were training people to jump out of wind turbines. So I remember driving to Sheringham Shoald Wind farm visiting Dong Energy who are now called Orsted So, you know people that don’t know Norfolk or the area, you know, it’s very alien to them. I’ve driven there to see
Brett Baber’s company launch with Thanos after he left Belectric. Paint a picture about your farming background, your surroundings, what is it like to live and work in Norfolk.
David (06:46.2) Well, it’s sort of in-built in me being in the countryside in Norfolk. I’ve moved around a bit and I travel a lot with work and I’m always pleased to be back in North Norfolk and the countryside of my home. I grew up on a small family farm. My dad’s still in…
still farms the land and runs that side of the family business. But yeah, it’s amazing. Even with the challenges of my childhood, it’s amazing place to grow up. near the countryside, beach and all of that. So it’s somewhere that’s extremely special to me.
and somewhere that I’m planning on moving away from any time soon. But I’m also pleased that now my children are having an opportunity to grow up there too.
Vikram (07:39.8) Fantastic. Tell us what kind of farming your family gets involved in and what stage do you decide .. I want a wind turbine?
David (07:51.768) Well, I suppose you might see in various different types of media, especially in utility scale solar industry, it quite heavily entwines with agriculture. you may come across the need for diversification within agriculture.
Food production, unfortunately, is not particularly profitable exercise in most cases, especially when it’s small farms. So farm in families, especially the scale that my family’s is, we have to look at ways to diversify both to stabilise the quite a risky business model with influences from weather and disease and various other things that can affect crop and yield. But also if you’ve got a family,
than you want. So it’s okay for my father to farm, but on a small farm that is barely enough income for one person. So unless my brothers and I…
then thought, okay, well, we want to develop a business that then grows and is able to sustain us as well as our father and keep that farming business going. we were forced into diversification. at the time, and obviously still now, renewable energy is a good thing to get into. It’s a growing industry. We all believe in what renewable energy can deliver for the country and for the world. So it seemed like a really natural place to start. And we’ve got other diversifications within our farming business.
but they’re all relatively small. There’s definitely the biggest potential for us and the family and also the wider community because as a result of all of the ventures that we’ve done to diversify, we’re now employing local people and bringing employment opportunities to a rural area, which is something that’s…
David (09:44.46) not often achieved. A lot of employment in our areas, either agriculture or tourism, both of which aren’t particularly well paid. it’s nice to bring some industry into that area and to employ people.
Vikram (09:58.99) Fantastic. I overuse the analogy from football because you coached my son Steve for over 8 years but I’ve listened to audiobooks as well where there’s the chess, there’s the contestants of life. The reason why I use the football analogy is because when you’re a parent on the other side it’s easy to be a backseat driver and a comment but when you’re coaching or playing you see a different side of it and I tie this point to NIMBYism because
in a lot of papers you read a lot, you hear a lot of people in the pub talking about, you know, we need to protect the countryside, we need to keep the land for farming, but if there are no farmers in business who’s gonna do the farming, so we need to protect the countryside, you know, how do you deal, why did you end up in the high court over a wind turbine, and how do you deal with this,
the concerns about biodiversity and protecting the countryside and not using prime agricultural land for solar?
David (11:01.398) It’s a good question. It’s quite complex. It’s something I’m relatively passionate about. And I’m not one of those people really that is saying at all costs deliver solar and wind. I do think it’s a balance. And I’ve been through the planning system a number of times, through renewables and also other types of projects. And it is a balance. You need to make sure that the scheme that you’re delivering is not adversely impacting people’s lives.
I’m a big fan of solar development, but there are occasions where perhaps solar is put in the wrong place. When it is put in the incorrect place from a society perspective, you try and objectify, if that’s the right expression, landscape impact, visual impact, environmental health when it comes to noise and smells. You try to try and objectively…
assess that when you’re planning. But it’s really difficult to do and it’s difficult to get right, especially from, as I said, a community perspective. So I’m really conscious of sensitively locating any infrastructure, whether it’s solar wind or otherwise, because if we don’t do it, it creates, I think wind got it wrong. Wind created an environment where the Conservative government decided to, even though they didn’t ban it, they put a footnote
I remember what was, but there was a footnote in the previous local planning policy that effectively banned it. And that was because I think the developers just pushed it too hard and put wind in the wrong locations and created a negative atmosphere around wind across the whole country, which meant that the Conservatives thought, we’re going to put something in place now to gain political…
whatever it’s called, gain votes, but at the detriment of the wind industry, which I still think is a good industry that should be promoted. And I just worry that we’re doing the same thing with some solar farms, but going back to our wind project, clearly ending up in high court is not something that happens within…
David (13:18.614) a site that’s not contentious. There were lots of people that didn’t want wind in North Norfolk. There was an anti-group. But part of the thing that drove me, even though I’m passionate about locating wind and solar in the right locations, the thing that really drove me to say, I’m not stopping. We’re going to go through these processes. We’re going to find them and carry on, was that I felt like I’d got the right location. There’s a lot of people that were worried about change. And that’s something that’s been in-built in all human beings.
I think, I mean…
But I think most people get used to their environment and they want, they don’t want it to change. They want to see the same view that, and if something goes into planning, they worry, is it going to be too noisy? Is it going to cause all sorts of detrimental things to my health? There’s lot of very interesting objections that came out of the woodwork when we put the application in, including being a navigational aid to aircraft, that we’re looking to commit terrorist attacks and it was going to give their children really horrible diseases.
These are things where people were convincing themselves, probably through searching on the internet, that this wind project was going to cause these problems to them. And they were genuine. It wasn’t nonsense. They were crying about it. It was upset. That was horrible to see, but I needed to get to the point where we delivered it so that everyone could see. It wasn’t as bad. We were locating it in the right place. It wasn’t going to cause some problems. And
I keep now and again asking local authority whether they’ve had any comments and there’s just been nothing. Everyone’s accepted it. Some people that live in the village say to me, and this is genuine, when are you going to build that project? It’s already over there. It’s already built. So it’s interesting. But I am really passionate about the correctly locating projects.
Vikram (15:03.532) Right.
David (15:17.868) And that is a difficult thing to achieve. And I think it’s even more difficult as we go towards more more NSIP projects. I see that communities being surrounded by solar, know, circling villages. I do ask myself, I mean, obviously, I’m a big believer in solar, so don’t let this statement make you think otherwise. I’m a big, I’m very concerned about those projects turning communities against renewable energy. And I think now,
given what’s happening in the world, this is the very time we need to make sure that communities in the UK and globally but in the UK are really on board with self-sufficient, self-generated power in the UK and think Renewable Energy has got a big part to play in that. So we don’t want to make it political.
Vikram (16:08.398) We don’t want to make it political, but at the same time, I think being paralysed by fear and inaction is also not something that I look up to. Because if you again look at the football analogy in the Wembley stadium, you can have 80,000 fans, a third of them could be shouting abuse, and they could be louder than the ones that are actually supporting. But there’s only 22 players on the pitch, plus the subs. And if you put yourself in the shoes of the people
that actually do things, you are on the receiving end of that abuse. I researched a lot of podcasts, Lex Friedman, he’s very talented, he did a podcast with the Prime Minister of India, and he says, criticize, but criticize after you have deep domain knowledge about something. Absolutely. Your criticism, if they’re just backseat driving, even if you’re a parent, if you’re backseat driving, you can have a detrimental impact.
David (17:02.99) You’re constantly seeing in the media, on social media, lot of incorrect information about renewable energy and it’s frustrating because as you said, I’m all for criticising, especially this new industry that’s expanding really quickly. There are a lot of things that we could criticise and improve about renewable energy but to see things in the media that are just completely untrue, it’s just not helpful. And I agree with you
you it’s very easy to stand by, read a headline that says Solar’s bad because of X, Y and Z and then jump on the bandwagon and just shout about it to your friends and social media. It’s easy to do that but it’s not that helpful.
Vikram (17:44.014) Absolutely. And I’m good friends with Clive Cosby. I’ve been talking to him for over 10 years now. One of our early podcasts, the second one was building largest solar projects. But I’m a big believer in turnover is vanity, but profit is sanity. Just sometimes you make more profit from a well-executed 1 megawatt C&I project where we did the AC design, for example, for Farnborough Airport. Then you would chasing .. Cleve Hill for six years. like I’ve done.
made no pounds out of it, that’s not why you do it. You do it because it’s almost, if you are a solar enthusiast, how could you not have an interest in the largest project in the country? Probably in the top 20 in Europe, if not higher. And so I think that the political element is important because…
You know, we have now the age of disinformation. We had the Cold War, then we had the collapse of the Soviet Union, and then we had the financial crisis in 2008. And that’s how I got into wind and solar. But we are in an age of disinformation. You know, energy, I still haven’t got over the fact how big the industry is. Everything’s driven by energy. We’ve got two energy wars literally happening right now in Ukraine and in Iran. And we can see the impact of that. So energy is one area where politics,
You know, finances, war, all of it intersects. So it’s natural as we start going towards NSIP, nationally significant infrastructure projects of 500 megawatt plus in scale, there’s even two gigawatt projects in development in England now. When we go to that level, because we need to make a dent, know, solar, if you look on EMBER think tank, is a decimal point.
in terms of the general energy use in the world and you’re not going to reach net zero by thinking small at the same time in C&I projects you can have you know other additional fire risks you have to be careful of you know if you put people don’t want industrial solar panels but then they want to put them on buildings and if they’re not executed well you’ve got fire risk there so that leads nicely towards your businesses do you want to start by introducing yourself with respect to what businesses you’re a part of and what your current
Vikram (19:59.6) focus is?
David (20:00.494) Yeah, why not? Part of our group, we’ve got three businesses that focus on delivering varying services to utility scale solar in the UK, Ireland and the US. I’ll run through them. Everblue Solar is an O&M services provider. So we’re not an O&M company. We provide services to either O&Ms or to asset managers, owners, EPCs of solar farms.
And we cover services like solar module cleaning on scale, land management that can include simple things like grass cutting and herbicide application or weed management all the way to planning compliance, biodiversity management, plan compliance and scheduling and working with ecologists to make sure that those things are delivered in accordance with either planning conditions or 106 agreements that are now coming in for the
BNG sites. So we also add on things like we can deliver drone surveys and a few other maintenance tasks. And part of everything that we do within Everblue we provide in-depth reports on…
what’s on site. So we try to add more and more value because we understand that with solar ESG is a big thing and we need to make sure that we make the most out of every single visit. The journey to the site is most expensive part. Once you’re there, let’s make sure we gather as much information for our clients so they don’t have to go there again, for example. We need to reduce visits, reduce fuel use. So that’s a big thing for us. Also within Everblue, we’ve got
SolarYield LLC which is our US version of Everblue and we cover between Texas and to North Carolina.
David (21:56.974) is the east of country. We’re module cleaning around 2GW of solar in the US. But that’s a very, very small market share compared to what we’re doing in the UK and in Ireland. The potential there is huge. So that’s quite an exciting venture and that’s been going a couple of years now, very successfully. And AgriSolar is one of the other businesses. That’s our consultancy. We spend a lot of time
either looking at biodiversity management plans pre-planning or pre-construction and making sure they align with the primary use of the land, which is going to be a solar farm. So making sure that what’s being delivered to and promised to create the credits that are needed to get the planning commission and the BNG credits can actually be delivered in unison with the operation of solar farm. And that’s quite rare. There’s a lot of conflicts normally with what’s being promised. So
trying to intervene and say let’s do this, this way, this, this way to make sure that everything gets done and you’re not in a situation where there’s shade. A good example is let’s put wildflowers everywhere. They grow too tall. They shade the front of the modules. Then suddenly we’ve got to cut the wildflowers down in the prime season to get rid of the shading. So it’s just a small example, which is a good one on how sometimes there’s a conflict between the two things. So we do a lot of that and then we do a lot of auditing.
AgriSolar will go and audit compliance on site, whether that’s planning compliance, biodiversity management, planning compliance. We do things like condition checks, bespoke checks that our clients come up with. And then the last company is our software as a service business, Novola It’s geospatial management tool. And that’s entwined in the other companies. We deliver a lot of our reports to our clients on it. But also it says software as a service is available to anyone.
industry. We’ve built it on the back of solar but we’ve got clients all over the world using it for various different geospatial management needs. But as I said, it’s been designed for solar because that’s the industry we’re in. It’s going really well. It’s a good way of seeing your solar plant geospatially mapped out. So they’re the three businesses with the US as well.
Vikram (24:25.454) As I said earlier, chess is a quintessential essence of life when you’re dealing with strategy, but I started to learn increasingly now Chinese strategy games called Go. And also reading Art of War and things like that, because Obsessing about market share, energy statistics, because we are trying to work towards net zero. So if we don’t understand the mechanics of the numbers, how do we know we’re going in the right direction? And I’ve lost a lot of money expanding abroad about…
learn powerful lessons and essentially the game of Go and Chinese art of war is Build from where you’re strong. Think globally, act locally and on this aspect you’ve got…
depending on which metric you use, I know there’s about 11 gigawatts of large scale farms. So if you’ve got 5 gigawatt you’re managing in the UK and Ireland or anywhere near that, you’re making structural observations with respect to the game theory about scale and seeing the market impact. I’ve worked on 3 gigawatts of solar farms, probably quoted 10 gigawatts and lost 70%. So the success rate doesn’t need to be huge to survive in the industry.
I want to
drill because We could do a whole series just because you’re so hyper hyperactive in the solar business and you have wind as well and you do agriculture. We could just do a whole series on your businesses. But if we try to focus and drill into core areas with Cleve Hill Solar Farm being a 1000 acres, now there’s 3000 acres solar farms in development. If you use trackers or fix the acreage changes and you know this You can have over 12000 football players on
Vikram (26:09.072) in Cleve Hill Solar Farm to give you idea of scale, know, over 500 football pitches worth. And so the point being, the challenge of like doing module cleaning on a 5 megawatt site or a 1 meg rooftop or 200 kilowatt rooftop is different to doing 5 portrait east-west modules which are 5 meters high at the highest point. And what I’ve learned on Cleve is, you know,
Now you’re getting into the realms of proper construction contractors that can move earth, they can install drainage, but where they may benefit from your insights is on the module cleaning front. How do you get at that height? How do you clean modules at height? What considerations do you pay to ensure there’s no glass cracking, there’s no hot spots? Those are the electrical areas where I feel the civil guys will benefit from your knowledge.
David (27:01.634) Well, ultimately, there are several sites that we’ve come across around the world that need a system outside of ours. Now, just coming back to the scale of Everblue and our market share and things, and it hasn’t been overnight. We’ve grown this from a
for lot of years incrementally. But the whole thing is built on systemising. And it’s making sure that you’ve got replicatable services and that they are just, obviously we’ll never out on the field, we’re never gonna see production line efficiency, but it’s based on that principle, making sure that everyone is trained to the same standard, use the same equipment, and it’s done over and over and over again.
And by doing that, you’re making sure that you’ve got consistent safety, consistent compliance, consistent quality. And that’s how we’ve gained our reputation.
It’s just doing things consistently over time and then expanding in that way. There’s lots of people that try and expand when they have some success as a small business and they fail and it’s because they haven’t noted down the systems. They don’t have a standard training package. They don’t have a process for all of the different eventualities that you come across on a solar farm field. So that’s what we’ve tried to achieve and by no means is it perfect. We’re still constantly working on
systems and in fact we’ve got a system, we’ve got a head of systems, someone just looks after those. The reason I’m mentioning that is because sites like Cleve Hill and there are many that we’ve come across in different countries that have been asked to review. It just involves something that goes away from our standard approach and…
David (28:59.372) we would go into our, if we were invited to do anything on a site like that, and we have been in the past, we would get our R &D team to look, okay, how can we do this? How can we make sure that we’re compliant with the warranties, clean effectively, make sure it’s safe, and cost effective. mean, that’s one of the, safety is a key driver, but cost is a big driver. And…
Vikram (29:23.426) What do you mean by cost? if someone does module cleaning on the cheap and they crack half a million modules, that won’t be very cheap.
David (29:31.38) No, that’s right, but there is a potential, I think, to…
to deliver services on sites like Cleve Hill really cost effectively with the right solution. But the right solution is an engineering project. It’s a year. It’s hundreds of thousands of pounds investment to get it. But once you’ve got that tool that’s been designed for that, then you could achieve quite cost effective. Module cleaning, as an example. So the solutions out there in companies like Everblue, we’re able to deliver them, but it wouldn’t be off the shelf.
So I think by designing something slightly outside of the norm, you just open yourselves up, any developer will open themselves up to increased costs. the last thing you wanna to do is say, okay, well, the O&M cost as a standard is this for a sofa in the UK, and then go and build Cleve Hill and expect it to be the same, because it’s not going to be.
Vikram (30:30.914) I’ll go down my own rabbit holes. I’ve doing solar for 20 years or 14 years full time. I’ve run into you a couple of times at networking dos which are very well attended. We have our own network of about 156 people now. 20 or 30 of them turn up once a month which is great for…
getting market intel, socializing with people. And I asked myself, know, module cleaning, how’s this relevant to cabling? then I’m researching with our teams in Switzerland and also some select contractors and suppliers, you know, what are the DC safety risks in solar? And, you know I was amazed when I did, invested a couple of grand in AI research over the last 12 months.
that there’s actually been fatalities from module cleaning because it’s impossible to isolate modules without covering them with a blanket or some kind of polymer. When the sun’s shining, you can have 1,000-1500 volt system which cannot be isolated. So what tools have you developed to ensure people don’t come into contact with DC electrocution?
David (31:40.692) I think just, I’ll come on to that, but just generally speaking, one of my concerns around a solar farm is that it’s not noisy typically. It’s not, as human beings, we have certain things that make us alert. It’s noise, it’s movement.
Vikram (31:56.834) You wouldn’t run into a gas turbine or a wind turbine.
David (31:59.406) Exactly. a solar farm has got sheep, know, birds are singing and it feels very safe. And I often see, which really frustrates me, companies posting on LinkedIn with pictures of primary school children or any children visiting the site and they’re all lining up and putting their arms along the surface with the modules on a sunny day. And I just think, one, if that was my kid’s primary school, that’d be big trouble.
No one has anyone tested that to see if there’s, I mean, don’t do it anyway because of the risk, but even if you want to do it, have you tested the frames to see if there’s any leaking?
Vikram (32:37.87) You’ll be safer going in a high voltage substation, which is properly earthed, than putting water on a 1500V system. And if there’s insulation failure under the right conditions, you can get a 1500V shock.
David (32:52.526) So all of our health and safety team have ensured that all of our teams are isolated from any possible leakage within our machinery. So that’s all been designed in. if there’s any, because all of, I’d say 99 point something percent of the module cleaning work we do is from a machine sitting in a cab and you’re isolated.
we do have to sometimes get out on the teams have got hand poles that they need to finish corners that are inaccessible and things like that. And they’re all insulated at 33 kV insulated poles. And there’s an absolute ban on touching any part of the solar panel with your hands. You you often see people doing, look at the dirt on the panel. I just wouldn’t touch.
Vikram (33:37.696) Look how nice it is. There’s Fortune 500 company with brochures showing people with bare hands touching conductive material.
David (33:50.636) Yeah, you go on the baby stock or any of those stock image companies. They’re all over there, people sitting on them and touching them and pretending to inspect them with children hanging onto them like this. It’s just the wrong message, I think.
Vikram (34:06.222) It’s the wrong message but also, I only worked at Honeywell for about 9 months. plus my honey leave. But Honeywell is a company that performs very well, ex forces, extremely disciplined. And in those 9 months, I was constantly visiting people that had an incident with safety at height, I had other colleagues in, know, eye wear protection, hearing protection, respiratory issues.
most memorable part is the underground and the waterways, they are familiar with invisible risks. If a worker’s fainted and you run chase after them without doing gas detection, could be odourless gas underground, which can lead to a fatality. And solar is similar. The risk is even less obvious than going in an underground tunnel because it’s a high-voltage system connected to 33 kV transformers or 11 kV. In the case of NSIP projects, 400 kV.
And if the earthing design fails for whatever reason, because even well-designed systems can fail, you can have a 33 kV earth potential rise. And these are things I didn’t know before. These are things I’m learning. So I think solar has a long way to go to industrialize the attitude towards safety.
David (35:25.198) I think wind is an industry that’s been around longer in the UK and it’s and also across the world and has unfortunately had a huge number of injuries and fatalities and I think often which is unfortunate the driver for change is when people are injured.
Yes. And Wind has got a really highly regulated health and safety, know, guidance and standards and well regulated. I think solar is much better now than it was when we got into solar operation and maintenance services 11 years ago. But there’s still some improvements to make industry wide, in my opinion.
Vikram (36:12.204) My observation of wind is, you know, it’s developed by huge companies like RWE, know, Orsted, know, Vattenfall. These are almost state led energy companies. Eon, etc. And with solar, it’s very CAPEX heavy, low margin during construction, especially for the EPC. And so you can have a lot of companies that haven’t got tremendous amounts of experience that relearn the same issues again, which leads to boom and bust crisis.
because then we’re very good at going legal on people when the site’s not performing, but we want the lowest possible module price, lowest EPC price. And because you’ve got such a huge market share, how do you deal with these quality risks that arise during the O&M stages? Like, What do you mean by O&M Services other than module cleaning that you provide? And what areas could people improve on when they consider developing and designing these sites?
David (37:12.728) Well, from our perspective and looking at efficiency while on site, planning compliance, safety.
The layout of a site has a big impact on how efficient things can be. mean, the obvious ones are, and we see it sometimes in the UK, but all of the time in the US, above ground cables. They’re efficiency killers when it comes to things where you need to travel around the whole site. You’ve got to drive in and reverse out of rows, and lot of hand management of, say, vegetation or module cleaning has to be done around these infrastructures.
there might be cost savings or reasons why you might use something like an overground cable train, but it definitely should be balanced with the probably doubling of costs when it comes to the services that we provide. I visited a solar farm in Spain that we were invited to tender for, and if they’d moved an inverter station cabinet two metres, and they had plenty of room, it wasn’t a constrained site.
from a land perspective, they moved that. They would have been able to clean 150 megawatts with one of our machines, would have been very cost effective. But because they put the inverters slightly in the wrong place, it blocked two rows. So you could only clean one third with our method and the rest would have to be done by hand. And that’s 150 megawatts. And because the rows are so long, you couldn’t.
it would be very difficult to use a robot because you wouldn’t be able to get the water to it. So it would be a hand wash. And it’s in southern Spain, which means that it’s going to need to be cleaned multiple times. the cost, increased costs within the O&M phase across, say, 30, 40 year lifespan of that project is colossal. there are a number of things that we come across. And I suppose the other thing is just compliance with what
David (39:15.982) planning permission, whether that’s by the best of management or where infrastructure is or the lease or what you promised to do. I’ve lost the train on that I’m We have to cut this bit out maybe. Or you can leave it and it’s quite funny. But I’ve been rambling for that last bit and forgotten what the question is.
Vikram (39:37.56) That’s fine. There’s the magic of editing. That’s why we’ve all review afters. When we were talking about The question I asked you was a bit unfair because it’s quite deep, which is, you know, you’ve got 5 gigawatt of experience and what could people do differently when they design and develop these sites? And then you said, like in the US, have above ground cabling.
David (39:40.63) Or don’t, it would be quite funny.
Vikram (40:03.444) which is not great for getting around the site.
David (40:07.106) That’s right. Yeah. And then on top of what can people get to do better? Yeah, it’s it’s it’s the promises that developers make and planning to get the planning over the line, which I can understand that you want to get the rubber stamp to say you can build this solar farm. there’s some pretty onerous biodiversity management plans being consented at the moment, which I don’t believe anyone’s quantified what the cost of delivering these are.
The difference between old sites, say 10-year-old sites, where they had a planning condition that said, this, plant these wildflowers, plant this hedge, or those were planning conditions. And planning conditions, if you don’t comply with them, the enforceability of those falls away. But with BNG, you’re signing a 106 agreement or…
or something similar with the local authority to promise to deliver the what they call BNG credits to deliver at least 10 % biodiversity net gain. Most solar farms are delivering.
200 % biodiversity gain, 250 % biodiversity gain. So those credits they’re generating or promising to generate are put in the planning balance. And that’s why the local authority have to secure that, the delivery of that legally. So now we’re in this position where all solar farms that are consented post BNG adoption, which was two or three years ago.
that are now being built today are going to huge costs when it comes to looking after all of these environmental promises they’ve made. And I think what you can do is consider the operational impact during the planning process to make sure that what you’re doing doesn’t conflict with the operational site and isn’t going to be too costly to actually deliver because it’s not like before where if you don’t deliver it, it can just be forgotten if no one raises an enforcement issue.
David (42:08.208) That will never fall away because it’s a legal agreement that you’ve sold or signed and if you don’t comply with it and someone complains, it’s going to be a much bigger problem than has been before.
Vikram (42:18.734) So then that leads to things we’re dealing with is that they’re tremendously detailed and every area needs a deep focus. you know, coming back to the early point about R &D, you why would you spend a million pounds .. developing a new process if the client wouldn’t pay for it? So there’s always a balance between the commercial element, doing sales and getting the agreements in and then spending the money upfront because the danger always is if you develop something without customer buy in, then if no one adopts
what we’ve developed, it just becomes sunk costs. So a lot of people don’t do R &D because of that. so have you thought about re-powering? Because a lot of the early solar farms, the inverters will be coming to end of life. I know also from industry reports, there’s tremendous amount of transformer failures in the PV business. Not because people are doing a bad job. It’s just the PV load profile is brand new. We’re not used to having DC infrastructure.
of this scale. These arguments are over a 100 years old between Nikola Tesla and Ed Thomas Edison and the AC grid won the arguments and now it turns out we need to keep the HV AC grid but we need to grow the DC grid which we don’t have 100 years of industrial knowledge on. So what is your thoughts on repowering?
David (43:34.306) No.
David (43:38.466) Well, arguably, a solar farm effectively is the electrical side of a solar farm. But that’s the part we don’t get involved with at the moment. We don’t do any electrical maintenance, any testing that’s left to the O&Ms or other contractors. So we’re delivering the bits around the edge that hopefully are equally as important.
Vikram (44:02.958) Everything’s important. If you don’t keep clean the modules and the performance drops by 30 % and people are raising funds on 5 % 8 % yields, it just defies logic. This is the long-term market rules we need to establish.
David (44:21.614) Yeah, it’s really interesting when it comes to discussing module cleaning as a principle because there’s lots of people that say, they’re self-cleaning, although there certainly was a message that we were getting a few years ago. then, and it’s then looking at how it’s perceived in different regions and the US there is much less frequent. In the UK, it’s frequent because if you don’t do it, you get a hardened dirt along the bottom edge and you get lichen and moss growth. And lichen and moss growing is very difficult to remove and then causes hot spots
on the modules and it can cause longer term damage and reduction of longevity. So just keeping the modules fresh like you would keep if you owned anything, you can keep it good condition. so keeping the modules in a good order is the way we do it in the UK and I do think that’s the right way of doing it.
Vikram (45:12.532) So Hotspots on modules, especially on commercial and industrial projects, know, that’s a huge fire risk. And unlike a solar farm, where if a transformer fails, it might be in the middle of nowhere. There’s a fire. You can go deal with it. If it happens on a massive warehouse, some of these warehouses can be several football pitches worth of rooftop space. And if there isn’t alarms, there isn’t process for monitoring, it could develop into a real life fire.
which no one can switch off. You’ve got modular power electronics which is also developing infant industry. The research I’ve done over the last three years is I’ve learned that the PV safety is extremely misunderstood and the reason why I ask you more challenging questions around repowering is because you’ve written in your notes that you’ve developed your own solar before.
David (46:10.158) Yes, there’s sister company to, well, there’s Everblue’s group and then there’s another company called Genatech. And that was the beginning of my renewable energy ventures. And that’s kind of the vehicle we used to develop that wind scheme. And also we’ve developed a few other small solar farms between…
2MW and 14MW I think is the biggest one we did. And those have all been purchased by other people and now owned and operated by them. And we still have operation maintenance contracts to deliver the services that we provide on those sites, but they’re owned and operated by other people.
Vikram (47:00.878) Fantastic, and is there a reason why you stopped developing? Do you still develop solar farms?
David (47:05.464) The last one I did was last year, I think. It was built last year, I believe. Time flies by, isn’t it? I think it was built last year. I don’t have the resources and time to search for the little pockets of grid and to chase all of the DNAs.
to get in all of it. That’s too complex for me. We stopped when grid availability became a finite thing. That’s the reason.
Vikram (47:41.838) Fantastic and you know you’ve got so many other businesses as well to talk about and Moving forward do you want to mention about the solar roadmap with the UK task force and also speak about you know your other businesses and where you want to take the direction of your own activities in the next next year or so?
David (48:06.326) Yeah, it was really, it was obviously an honour to be mentioned in the solar roadmap. It’s amazing that the people that put that together felt that our story was a story they wanted to tell within that document. Effectively, the message there, if anyone hasn’t read it, is that solar delivers more than just a solar farm and solar
renewable electricity. It stimulates local economies. And our message was, we built a 3.6MW solar farm on our farm. And from that got the idea of how are the modules going to stay clean because we saw that during construction, they got muddy. And then we developed that. from that,
solar farm has come the growth of our business in our small village in the rural area in Norfolk. And I think that could be, well it has been replicated
but could be replicated more across the whole country where these remote locations that have renewable energy projects are able to stimulate those thoughts of people and generate, I guess ultimately generate local employment. And as I said before, we employ quite a number of people from North Norfolk and there are relatively limited opportunities for careers there. It’s very focused on…
tourism, the catering industry, farming and fishing, all of which are a great place to be. But they don’t necessarily offer a range of opportunities and suppose salaries that perhaps other industries might earn. So It’s really nice that these solar farms and other renewable energy projects are perhaps stimulating
David (50:11.342) paid local employment in rural areas. guess that was the message that we were trying to portray in the roadmap.
Vikram (50:21.438) Absolutely and you wrote something about mental health, You invest in mental health support services, do want to talk about what that is and how do people benefit from it and who it’s for?
David (50:35.914) Yana is a mental health charity. They support rural workers that often work in isolation. And it’s something that we’re
Vikram (50:50.048) What does Yana mean? What does it stand for? You’re not alone, I think.
David (50:54.434) Yeah, well, you should cut, yeah, maybe I should have researched that for you. We… Should we start that bit again?
Vikram (51:05.218) That’s fine, just carry on, I’ll edit any parts that…
David (51:13.036) Yana supports rural people with mental health issues and it’s close to us because all of our staff work in the middle of nowhere. mean, everyone knows most solar farms are located in the middle of a field all over the country and they do work in teams, but they’re not necessarily always together, they’re doing different things. So I think it can be quite isolated. obviously within
Within our company we do the best to support our teams, but within the wider rural world you’ve got farming and people on solar farms and lots of different industries where people are working alone. So think Yana, we believe, is a really good charity to support and it…
It’s something that’s close to us and we want to make sure that everyone has someone to call if they need it. I don’t think, you know, it’s not necessarily just for rural people. There’s no, you don’t call up and say, are you rural? That’s where it starts.
Vikram (52:22.911) you ruined it.
Well, the irony is now your isolation has become not only because I’ve been in field sales and sales engineering for most of my adult life. And one of the reasons why I get along with lot of RAF, Navy, Army people is it’s not an easy thing if you’re always in a family environment, in school, in university, in workplace to spend long hours in isolation on your own. And now with Covid, people working from
home more, everyone was in Jacuzzis, not everyone but a lot of you know celebrating, wow I’m working from home. Suddenly they realised two years later they’re tremendously lonely and kids that were studying from home told to go back to school because you could see that my wife’s a teacher, you could see the impact on people.
David (53:15.886) There’s definitely some anxiety around it. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s really important that we interact as humans. It’s a really good thing. I think without it, you can struggle. So, YANA is a brilliant charity and obviously encourage everyone to take a look at what they do. yeah, so we support them.
Vikram (53:37.646) I don’t judge anyone with mental health. know, surprised as I was driving to Manchester University with my daughter listening to Alex Ferguson’s autobiography because he, one of the biggest things he dealt with was loneliness. Because even though I’m Alex Ferguson, Sir Alex, I’m always in company of people, people were so afraid of him, no one would go to his office. So, you you think you know someone and know, Network Rail has a great advert about this, you know, you know, have conversations with people, check in on others.
In terms of coming to a conclusion, what do you think is the future of solar photovoltaics and more importantly what kind of people do you want to work with?
David (54:23.768) Good question. So, solar voltaics, the future, I mean, it’s obviously an extremely good source of renewable electricity. It’s a reliable source and we can predict it. And so I think we will continue to successfully integrate solar within our industries and within our country, within our energy network.
Obviously we work in utility scale solar, but don’t necessarily think that’s the strategy at the moment is the correct one. I do think that there should be a real emphasis on self delivery, whether that’s a business or your own home. I think there’s a lot of infrastructure costs that come with maintaining and balancing a grid.
if you generate it locally, whether that’s a private wire system on a housing site or whether that’s your own solar on your roof or in your garden, I really think that’s the first step. Everyone should be looking at how they can deliver their own power. they should, I know there are incentives for people to do that, but I think it perhaps should be publicised a bit more and incentivised a bit more. I think it comes with a caveat of making sure these things stay maintained because there is…
there is a risk that you invest in something that someone sold you as this amazing setup with a battery, but then there’s no maintenance that falls away and then you’re then reliant on the grid again. there’s a little bit about maintenance. I think that straddles all of solar for me. The key to making sure solar is a viable member of
energy infrastructure As we move forward into the future is making sure that it’s maintained correctly. And I don’t think it’s being done On a private or commercial basis or a utility scale basis. I don’t think the maintenance has been nailed yet. And therefore, we’ve got to get that right before we start calling it national infrastructure. we are improving that. the future of solar for me is really
David (56:44.368) exciting. I think, as I said earlier, Within the context of what’s happening within the world, solar is a brilliant opportunity for the UK to be more self-sufficient. And we should be doing that. But should we be blindly building hundreds of solar farms without looking at pushing more localised generation, more private wire projects? I don’t know. I’m not sure whether we’ve got the mix right right now.
But I certainly think it has an exciting future in this country.
Vikram (57:20.018) A lot to think about there. My personal view is, know, I share a similar career journey to yourself, which is I started my business to focus on onshore wind and it pretty much got banned and offshore wind favours larger companies, so it’s difficult to get involved with that unless you have yacht, not a yacht, but a massive sea wind turbine laying vessel or even for the cables you need subsea cable laying vessels. So I go into solar not to be green, but just because I needed work.
You know, so I’m actually focused on the business end of things. And I think anything done badly goes wrong, whether you’re building a house or a data center or so. It’s a power plant at end of the day. And if people don’t pay attention to longevity because pension funds are investing so low, they want 25 year, 40 year returns. If the site is failing within year 2 or 3 and there’s not a budget for O&M, there’s going to be an issue. And I think whatever people think, rightly or wrongly,
the Brexit referendum was very divisive and the industry sort of fell off a cliff edge in 2017. But we are a small country in the, every country is a small country in the general scheme of the world. But we’re not the largest country in the world. And solar’s now, you know, I’m amazed. The reason why I’ve stuck at it for 14 years and expect to spend my career in solar is because I’m amazed as to the potential. There’s 3 terawatts of
solar installed worldwide. 1 terawatt of that, over 1 terawatt of that is in China. know, there’s countries like Netherlands, which are smaller than the UK, have overtaken us. Spain, you can understand, they’ve got more sunshine. Italy, you can understand. Germany, you know, it’s not a lot warmer than ours as a climate, has over 100 gigawatts of solar. So the world has moved on very rapidly. And unfortunately now, because of more geopolitical tensions, the
Ukraine, with America, with Iran. Now we’ve got a situation where the UK is becoming stable again. whatever we do, we have to find a way of establishing market standards, otherwise it’s going to fail.
David (59:36.578) And I don’t think we can necessarily, it isn’t a criticism from my perspective of the way things are now. It’s a really fast growing industry and it’s very new. And you’ve gone from pretty much zero to however many terawatts you said globally at second. 3 terawatts. 3 terawatts. And that’s been in a small amount of years. And it’s not just about the deployment of that and the management of it. It’s about the technology that’s changed. If you look at the technology 15 years ago.
it’s evolved. all of that has happened in a short space of time. There’s always going to be, excuse me, when that happens, there’s always going to be problems. no one should be, I’m not criticising anyone by saying things aren’t right now. It’s just the nature of fast expansion in industry. I go back to your question earlier about who you want to work with. I think we just need to make sure that everyone,
Whatever one I want to work with are people that can see that. They can sit down and reflect on what they’ve done or what the industry has done or their colleagues have done and say, okay, well, we didn’t get it right. Let’s hold our hands up. But we are a growing industry and we’re all learning every day. We’re learning really fast every day, actually. And how do we fix it as opposed to blindly just pushing forward and not…
not reflecting on things that were not done correctly or were done correctly. I think it’s really important that we have constant self-reflection within this growing industry. And I think the people that are willing to do that are the ones we want to work with.
Vikram (01:01:21.066) Absolutely. And as we come towards the end of our podcast, thank you for your time. you know, you have a meeting at one o’clock. You know, it’s not been easy to do this podcast because we are in the middle of London in Bloomsbury. There’s like horns going off, police cars, people interuptting. I think you’ve done a fantastic job. It shows nerves of steel to carry on and then to retain your train of thought. But coming back to the actuarial science of solar, which I’ve been trying to learn, it’s an area my son has an interest in.
I try to stay relevant in my kids lives as they become teenagers and try to talk to me less and less. What I’m amazed by is, and those that are lucky enough to invest in solar in retirement and those that are young enough to still work in the industry. And I think where I’ve got things in common with yourself is you’ve been involved in solar from a very young age. You still have a couple of decades ahead of you at least, touch wood, hopefully, even more. in our lifetimes, according to Shell Sky
Scenario and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US, solar has a pipeline of 75 terawatts in the next 20, 30 years. So there’s 3 terawatts installed and there’s probably 72 terawatts more ahead of us. And that is an economic reality that’s already modeled. So if you put that into perspective,
The oil and gas industry may have started out, and if it’s true, 100 % of my feeling is may have started because of the two world wars. And it wasn’t very easy. there’s movies like There Will Be Blood. The oil and gas industry was also a cowboy industry in the beginning, driven by necessity. And they’ve stabilized themselves over.
the Industrial Revolution onwards. And solar is at that growing pain stage, with this opportunism, there’s compliance concerns, there’s hubris and overconfidence. know, the proud fall harder than the weak. You know, if you go build a million solar panels without a design, we’re going to have problems. And people want then want to sue us for the risk that comes with that. So, you know, but all of that just tells me there’s a lot of exciting work to do.
Vikram (01:03:34.336) And you want to be where there is difference to be made because if we go into construction, people know how to build tall buildings. We can’t teach them to do it better.
David (01:03:42.648) I think the exciting thing is, well the opportunity is exciting for anyone that has knowledge and in the experience that perhaps a lot of people in the UK have to help the world meet that 70 something terawatt demand
Vikram (01:03:59.47) 75 terawatts by 2050 if I’m not mistaken.
David (01:04:02.648) Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of opportunity for people that have knowledge and experience. But I think the fundamental thing that we need to do is make sure that we turn the knowledge of those people into a systemised approach. Make sure, because one person can go into a company or into a region and have an influence. But if you create…
training packages, you create systems, businesses that are replicatable that can then support the globe as it develops 70-something terawatts. That’s what’s needed. It will never be possible to deliver that unless we have a system to do it.
Vikram (01:04:44.11) And how we price the risk as we come towards the end and I’ll let you go to the next meeting. How we price the risk is also an art form in itself. if modules are 10 cents a watt, they used to be 55 cents a watt during MIP. EPC is now around 42, 50 cents a watt or pence a watt. Currency exchange is a thing as well. And operating solar assets, some of them are incentive linked are trading at £1.35 a watt. So that gap, if you round up to 50 per watt for EPC, including modules, the structure.
and you know I don’t even know what the O&M budget is. If you double that, that’s still below 35 pence below the trading values of solar. So the gap in between is the delivery risk that people don’t want to take on. So if you can find a mechanism of de-risking those things, there is a hell of a lot of margin to be made. But because there’s so much capex…
There is going to be constant boom and bust cycle, but I can’t think of another industry more exciting than solar. Maybe energy storage, battery storage comes close, even more exciting is the grid for me.
David (01:05:50.22) Yeah, no, very exciting place to be. Myself and all of the team that we work with and all of our clients, we’re all really excited about growing our businesses and continuing to deliver good quality services into the future. it’s exciting stuff.
Vikram (01:06:09.73) Thanks for your time today and I’m going to switch off now to let you focus on your one o’clock call which is in about three minutes and then we can carry on talking about your other businesses which we haven’t even spoken about over lunch if you have time. Cheers.
David (01:06:18.06) Time flies.
David (01:06:23.406) Sounds good. Yeah, good to see you. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks, David.
Vikram (00:02) Welcome to the Future of Solar Photovoltaics Podcast, my name is Vikram Kumar. Today I’ve got the absolute pleasure of having Mr. Clark Frost from Heathcote Holdings with us today. Welcome Clark
Clark (00:14) Thank you, Vikram. Thank you for the invite.
Vikram (00:18) Well, our podcast started off as an amateur initiative with Matthew Xenakis from JA Solar. Now we’ve been listened to in over 91 countries. Solar is now a civilizational technology, especially what’s happening in Iran with Strait of Hormuz We are again headed towards another energy crisis. We thought we were over it with Ukraine, with gas, which is affecting a lot of businesses worldwide, especially British businesses.
And now, you know, our podcast has listened to in over 91 countries. know, the title of the The theme is the future of solar photovoltaics. know, solar is not new. Thomas Edison said it will be a water source of energy 100 years ago. So it’s not something we’re not reinventing the wheel. It’s been going on for a very, very long time. Our podcast is UK focused, with a keen eye on global trends.
There’s over 22 gigawatts of UK solar now, about half of that is large scale. There’s three terawatts of solar installed worldwide. That’s three trillion dollars worth worldwide As of end of 2025. ⁓ You know, and We are following the market trends with respect to the grid, with respect to EVs, with respect to batteries, you know, which can tap into wind as well when there isn’t any solar. Why? Why are we so focused on the future of solar photovoltaics?
is because according to the Office of National Statistics, we use about 1,644 terawatt hours of energy. That’s all energy, primary energy. And about 300 terawatt hours of that is electrical energy, electricity. And just LED light bulbs have removed about a quarter of electrical energy use. And if we electrify everything that can be electrified, then… ⁓
you reduce about 70 % of UK energy use. It would be a no-brainer because we are in an energy crisis. It’s busting a lot of businesses. Farmers are facing difficulties. But why are we not accelerating? And labour shortage is one of the themes. The other theme is ⁓ the fact that the grid can’t keep up with enough connections. So we’ll get all into that shortly. But do you want to start?
with an intro theme about yourself, introduce yourself, talk about your early life, your background, ⁓ your 36 years in civils and your current focus.
Clark (02:47) Yes, not many people remember the old YTS scheme which I started out on, which was I think only people of my generation would understand that. But that was a stonemason back in the mid 80s. ⁓ But then progressed, I was then in construction, then it moved through life doing bespoke new builds, hotels, commercial buildings. ⁓
there was a lot of renewables, whether it be air source, ground source, but then we moved into doing rooftop, roof mounts, just within the buildings, obviously people want to cut down. then, was four years ago, I moved back up to Kent, started with Heathcote Holdings at FGS Pilcher to be their commercial ⁓ manager for civils
And then we moved on from there. And now we’re at stage, I suppose for the last, since October, November 22, we’ve been involved in solar, whether it be enabling works, ⁓ civil, electrical, and then we’ll be doing the screw piling for the ⁓ foundations of the electrical and battery storage, which was good.
So we would actually come in, soil test, pile test, manufacture, design, install, warranty. ⁓ Because the ground was alluvium, so that saved a lot in using concrete within the ground because they are reusable because they’ve got a…
we can extend it to a 100 year warranty. if at any point you wanted to remove them, they can come out and be reused elsewhere. Which was a good system, very good system. And we’re engaged with that. We have the exclusivity to that with designers in Finland.
Vikram (04:53) Absolutely. We’re changing the way we’re working because people meet each other ⁓ very infrequently these days. COVID has changed how we all work. We don’t visit customers three or four times a week now, three days out on the I should be. Now we started to do our monthly networking because we want to bring people together to deal with some of the uncertainties. So I think we first ran into you in Intersolar in Munich with Andy Nicholson last
Yeah.
Clark (05:23) It
was, yeah. That was an eye-opener, the size of it. We didn’t expect it. Andy and I rocked up and we said, why is everyone wearing suits with the trainers on clouds? And then we realised after we’d done 67,000 steps, we’re wearing Chelsea boots. That was a mission. We knew that, but…
It was very educational and inspiring to be perfectly honest with you. Which has now obviously led us into, we are now…
building out solar farms. We are constructing one at present. Decent size, 75 megs, it’s electrical, mechanical. We’re doing a lot of enabling works on other sites, which is good. And it’s getting in doing the early enabling works with prior to other contractors coming in on site. Because it saves time, it improves health and safety. Everything’s all there. It’s ready to go. So that when the other contractors come in, or if we’re in there doing a package, we can make it work.
and we are responsible then, and we are responsible for our own health and safety which is paramount.
Vikram (06:40) One
of the biggest focuses now is to build some credibility and trust in the industry. And you and Andy Nicholson are a great laugh, know, being a regular fixture in our networking events in London, in Birmingham. Of course, we’ve met in a different country. you know, so to build that trust with the market, you know, you want to talk about Heathcote Holdings, like, why should people trust you?
Clark (07:04) I think, so it was a real eye-opener for me when I first came to Heathcote Holdings. Very family orientated and the services within the group.
and how they support each other is fantastic. And we don’t over promise we want to deliver. If we say we’ll deliver it, we will deliver it. And you’ve got the support of, think, I don’t know what it is now, but I think within the group there’s probably over 1200 employees now.
You can pick the phone up to any of the family. So whether that be Trevor, Martin, Nathan, you’ll get the support. And we’ve got ecologists, we have everything. We’ve got it all in-house. it’s all… We can support the EPCs on…
saving money on their biodiversity and it gains and there’s just so many elements to it. ⁓ Obviously we’ve got others here today that can actually bring those points in front of you but it really is a very close working company and we, people think we’re just incorporating into Kent, we’re not. We’ve got
facilities all over the UK that we can actually call upon and it’s all about the relationships that the Heathcote family have built over the years, whether it be farmers, suppliers, no matter what it is.
Vikram (08:40) Kent is a beautiful county and they have a nice lobster shack with good beachside views and oyster festivals. I’ve spent, I started my business to focus on family and it’s been over 14 years, Ventus and worked with 3 gigawatts of .. solar farm in the UK, few select projects worldwide and solar’s led me to some of the best experiences of my life. People say solar power, but all trees grow on solar power. And so these 3 gigawatts
Clark (08:44) They don’t.
Vikram (09:10) was .. solar process that we worked on, it doesn’t sound like a lot in the general scheme of things, I think it’s less than 0.7 % of the global install. we haven’t got massive amounts of irradiance in the UK, but after March we do have long hours of daylight, and solar works in daylight, and it complements very well with wind. And so the three gigawatts that we worked on within large scale of over 10 gigawatts, majority of projects were 5 meg, 10 meg, 50 meg. We worked hard to reach that number.
makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up when you think, you know, the UK’s first nationally significant infrastructure project, NSIP, know, like Cleve Hill Solar Farm. Yeah. It’s been a story going on since before COVID. You know, I’ve been following that site for over six years because it was originated by Wirsol which is one of our good customers, key accounts, you know, a great family business. They have a great reputation. Many of those have started Boom Power now. Yeah. And, know, to think, you know, 373 megawatts DC in one single
That’s nearly over 10 % of what we worked on in 14 years across one site.
to put into, and a lot of this is public data, know, it’s the site maybe over a thousand acres. Yeah. I was doing a calculation, you know, several hundred football pitches. I did a calculation with Jason at Tongwei you can have 12 and a half thousand football players on Cleve Hill’s solar farm. So, you know, there’s a massive site. So talk to us about specifically.
which areas did you, because a lot of this is public data. It was highly confidential before. But now it’s public. You know, you’ve had people singing your praises, know, Colin Freeman, you wrote on LinkedIn. You’re the next, you’re the fourth emergency service. You know, so a lot, there’s a lot of smokes and mirrors in solar. And, know, this is an amateur podcast and this is about educating and informing as well as talking about our businesses. Tell us specifically, what was your scope at Cleve Hill Solar Farm? And without breaking any confidentiality
Clark (10:45) It is.
He did.
Vikram (11:11) clauses, what exactly did you get involved with?
Clark (11:15) So we…
We’re involved in the beginning with the land preparation. We’ve done some pile testing and then we’ve done the pile testing within the electrical compound, which was carrying all the switchgear buildings, harmonic filters, blast walls, so on. And then the BESS Our designs then led to that being the foundation for the whole site. Well, I say the whole electrical site.
There was so many elements that we were involved with down there. Working with UKPN to remove the 11 KVA overhead power line, re-channel and obviously joint bays right the way across, I think it’s two kilometres at the site. Which all went very, very well. Then we were doing, there was earth moving, there was habitat works, there was wetland creations. We’ve got hundred acre wetland creation down there over two phases.
⁓ which was overseen wasn’t overseen, there was partial design by the RSPB because they’ve got Seasalter next door and that was a very big project that we’d done there. ⁓ There was a lot of earth moving.
⁓ And really a lot of innovation that we were trying to bring into the site because of the height of the tables and it’s obviously working at height was a big factor there and fortunately, yep, it got built and it’s now producing power. Right. You know, we looked at civil designs.
We’ve done mechanical under one contract. yeah, mean, I think across the whole site, I don’t really think there was anything that we didn’t actually contribute to. ⁓ From the early engagement before anybody was on site, right way through to even now, we are PC down on the BESS just whilst as an interim, ⁓ which is…
It’s great. We still fully support the client down there and we still work very closely with them. I think the biggest issue down there was the ground conditions because of the rain, because of…
So health and safety was paramount. Making sure that the walkways were in place and ensuring that not just other contractors but our guys on site were safe. ⁓ You have to have the banksmen, you’ve got to have… which was all put in place. It wasn’t put in place by us but it worked and it did get over the line ⁓ and we were very proud to be part of it.
Vikram (14:09) Fantastic and you know a lot of people work in finance you know these are the gods of industry that raised the money to build all of this. And you know so talk to us about you know 12 meter screw piles I’ve got the notes here in front of me and you know soil being alluvium you know what does that all mean?
Clark (14:27) So, alluvium, I don’t know the technical term, but if you imagine you’ll go down to probably a metre, there about 900 to a metre, and it’s almost like lava. That’s the easiest way to describe it. So we would have to design the piles so that… ⁓
just to get a 275 kilonewton bearing, each pile was, the helix had to be a certain thickness. The pile itself had to be a certain thickness. And you put a sacrificial layer within that steel to ensure the life expectancy of it because of the salt, it’s literally the other side of the wall is the sea. ⁓
So there was a lot to do with that. then obviously they’re installed with a digger head. you have various, and it’s set on a torque setting, which then gives you…
the reading that you need, but the digger heads have a halo on them. So you know that they’re always going in level. They’re all precision ⁓ marked. You install your first six meters, bolt them, and then install the second. Because there’s just not a machine that you could reach to that height. We still have to put an extra boom and extension on the end of a 13 ton machine. And we installed…
think probably, it was about two and a half thousand parts, at 12 metres. ⁓
across the whole battery storage area. And it’s just a great system. You can use these for anything. You can use them for the MV stations. If you’re on soft ground, they can be used. But what a lot of people make a mistake of is they call them a ground screw. A ground screw is like a wood screw. I wouldn’t use them to put a garden shed up. You can’t just buy them off the shelf. You need to have proper ground tests
in designs so you can do a compression, you pull out your laterals to ensure that you have the correct pile for the correct loadings. If you don’t, it’s going to fail.
Vikram (16:41) Absolutely. One of the things I noticed about Heathco Holdings is that you guys are proper civils people with the massive diggers and machinery and I’ve got here in the notes you’re moving 20,000 meter cube of soil. I hope I’m saying that right.
You and when you talk about wildflowers and ecology and things as well shortly, because there’s an element of NIMBYism as well, we don’t want it in our backyard, but you know, having coal power plant is not going to be any better, know, that destroys more of the countryside, you know, especially with this controversy around biomass and things. But what does a National Significant Infrastructure Project mean in practical terms?
We’ve got some data, because it’s the NSIP, National Significant Infrastructure Project, a lot of data is in the public domain, because it’s in the public interest. We’re installing a thousand acre solar farm. You can see from the press releases, it’s the East-West system, 5 modules in portrait, around 655 watt modules. can see, ⁓ tell us in practical terms.
What does a National Significant Infrastructure Project mean in terms of size and scale and what’s involved? How do you move 20,000 meter cube of soil?
Clark (17:57) It’s a logistical nightmare, but if the logistics are right and down to the EPC, they get the logistics right and you work together. It’s all about collaboration. cannot have ⁓ contractors working against each other. It just doesn’t work. You just end up falling at the first hurdle. And it’s all about…
Yeah, I mean, it was good because every morning at 8.30 there was a site meeting. Everybody knew their areas. Everybody knew what was being done. And you’ve got to take your hat off to the EPC for doing that because they did manage that very, very well. especially in the conditions in the winter.
they managed it. Whether it be with Trackmap, whether it be any form of rolling road, they managed it. you could have it.
a lot of issues if you didn’t on that type of ground. But they managed it and we assisted with that. when we’ve got to shift 20,000 cubic material across a live site, it took a lot of doing. And this is where we incorporated it with the FGS Agri side of the business. They came in rather than using track dumpers. We did have track dumpers, but we also used tractors and trailers with floatation tyres. And we just had to make sure we had our banksmen in
place. In all fairness, there was no… ⁓
crossover to cause huge concerns. Everyone worked as a team and it was organised to where it needed to be, mainly health and safety. It was absolute paramount and fortunately the site went very well.
Vikram (19:59) Obviously the industry is changing enormously because… ⁓
I think we’ve wasted, for good or for bad, some families are split over the Brexit referendum, some people voted in, some people voted out, but it’s been 10 years of slowdown productivity. I remember the time from 2012 to 2016, we ran out of printer paper, there were so many solar orders coming through, and now the projects are few and far between, but they’re very large. So talk to us a bit about the difference between almost a 400-meg NSIP project and a 50-meg solar farm.
how do you paint a picture about the difference? I’ve got the notes, you see the differences are immense but a lot of people never set foot on a NSIP solar farm.
Clark (20:40) They don’t and there is so much more that you need to take on board. You’ve got, I mean it’s all to do with, mean the way that we work it is…
you’ve got to bring authority and you really do and everybody has to be on point. Because it doesn’t matter, I don’t think it really matters on the site, you’re just scaling it up. And when you’re scaling it up, there’s obviously a lot more management in.
incorporate into that. Whereas a 50 meg site, you’re going to have a small management team. NSIP projects, you’re going to have a huge management team. And they’ve all got to be responsible for their areas. And I think if you can ensure, and everyone takes ownership of what they’re doing, fundamentally they’re the same, but…
the risk is higher on health and safety. The risk is higher on logistics. And it’s just about managing that. it’s accessing across the site as well. You’ve got to ensure that you have all of those procedures in place. It’s exciting on a big project because it’s so immense compared to a small project. ⁓
I found it quite exhilarating. for me, I actually enjoyed it and Andy enjoyed it. Andy Nicholson
Vikram (22:15) You know, I coached a grassroots football team for around eight years and you know, I’m very well aware how the weather changes from summer to winter. Yeah. So on a scale of a project of, you know, thousand acres, how do things change between summer and winter? How do you prepare for wet weather?
Clark (22:34) The…
All your internal roads are already in. They’re in. your enabling is done, but you cannot help the transfer of mud from the grass to the tracks. You’ve got to ensure that only wheeled machines, vehicles, stay on the whole roads. Anything tracked stays on the grass because that’s what pulls in all the mud. Then it’s picking up the stone. Then it’s spreading the stone. You’re losing it. then you’ve got a maintenance team then constantly clearing
.. the roads and which adds to your logistics. That’s causing delays on people moving across site, so you’ve got to ensure that that’s done in the process. If you can isolate the two areas, it makes it a lot simpler. I know it’s not always practical, but it is a better way of doing it because you’ve got to…
You’re always on a deadline. You have that deadline to meet. And if you’re delayed because of roads, because of mud, you’ve got to forward think everything. You’ve got to ensure that you’ve got track mat in place. We supply a lot of track mat. We put it across the sites. I think they take it… I’m sure it’s…
the MegaDeck up to about 700 tonnes. I mean they’re huge. They take a lot of load ground-bearing.
Vikram (24:03) If you’ve got 1000 containers arriving, sync.
Clark (24:06) Yeah,
so you’ve got to ensure you’ve got the right CBR values in the roads and access to where the MV stations are going and containers. And that is all in the planning, that is all within the enabling works.
But yeah, it is just choosing the right vehicles. really is. Summer, fantastic. Anything can go across there. But when the winter comes, as we all know on any solar farm, that everybody’s experiencing, you’ve just got to make sure those logistics are right.
Vikram (24:41) Absolutely, know, energy prices is the story of the hour now because, you know, people are paying up to 30 pence per kilowatt hour and, know, a terawatt hour of energy is 300 million pounds at 30p. Yeah. And if you’re 300 terawatts of electricity, and that’s a small part of our overall energy. Yeah. So people are not appreciating the scale of what’s to come, you know, and this is all in the public documents. If you’ve got 655 watt modules, over 373 megawatts DC, you can have over half a million solar panels.
And so the scale of it is enormous, but this is just a starting. There are 530 meg projects in the pipeline now with East Yorkshire to come from the same developer, Boom Power that was previously Wirsol. , so , so talk to us a bit about how do you manage the thousands of piles that will be involved? How do you incorporate automation? And also Clive, who was on our earlier podcast, he’s getting into module handling business. How do you get panels to five meter height?
Clark (25:40) So that is one of the the difficult so you we ⁓ made trailers which were had a turntable in and then we had a pulley wrapped because obviously it is working at the rear they were quite high If Clive’s the Ozzie module handler was around that would have been the key to it because that
will aid any project working at high, any site that’s in a flood risk, they’re always going to be taller. And that’s where his equipment comes into. And I’ve been there, I’ve sat on a digger, I’ve tried it and it works. And I’m not a perfectly skilled operator on an excavator, but I can operate one. And I had just went on the trial and it works. It was great.
Vikram (26:34) See the thing that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up is, know, Clive was involved with the last fully successful solar farm and this was under normal conditions. You know, we had feed-in tariff rush in those days, but it was nothing like the labor shortages we faced post Brexit and COVID. Clive was the lead project manager at Shotwick Solar Farm, which was 72 megawatts. know, Cleve Hill is 300 megawatts bigger than that, approximately. And Cleve Hill’s a baby compared to what’s on the horizon. East Yorkshire’s 530 megawatts.
I don’t know if it’s DC or AC, but people can look that up themselves, you know.
there’s talk about people doing two gigawatt solar farms. you start doing landscape changes. I feel strongly about the farming industry as well, which is a topic for another day. But you’re not going to be allowed to build on prime agricultural land. And so you’re going to naturally get land which is prone to flooding, brownfields and so on. How do you deal with a one in a thousand year flood protection event, which is part of the planning documents?
There is a sea defence wall as well. ⁓
Clark (27:40) Yeah,
I mean you got a 1 % chance over 30 years of any flood. know, 3 % in 100 years. I think the only… there is the risk is… it’s there, but you know I think the way that the site is constructed…
shouldn’t be an issue but personally I don’t think it will be an issue down there. think there’s you know on any site where they have this issue. You know I was talking to somebody not so long back about a project down in Gloucestershire and that was the same and there was that was it does flood to 1.5 metres annually so it was quite a high
Vikram (28:25) But one in a thousand years sounds like we don’t need to worry about in our lives, lifetimes, but I see the site full of water
Clark (28:29) No, exactly that.
That’s to do with land drainage
Vikram (28:37) So that’s the next point in your question because I imagine I’ve got lot of your notes that you haven’t got in front of you. But how do you design drainage of flood resilience on flat agricultural land?
Clark (28:50) So the core business within FGS Pilchers, one of the core business, is we use Mastenbroek Trenchers, which are all GPS guided. So we use a, I think it’s called FarmWorks, It’s a Trimble system.
survey the field and they can either be done by drone or we’ll actually survey it manually. That shows us the field and now as long as you’ve got a water core somewhere if not then it has to go into a pump whatever whatever system needs to be the outfall needs to be but we can drain the field but the problem is you have all these land drains that go in you can’t
You’re piling the whole site. You cannot help but hit the existing land drains. And you can’t repair them because that’s where the piles sit. So you’ve got to try and enable a design that will help with that. But when you’ve got all the cable routes, everything’s within the ground. It’s causing you issues. then the design becomes lot more difficult.
It’s still simple enough to do and they do work. You look at any agricultural field that’s been land drained. You can go on Google Earth, look at anywhere in Kent. Mainly down on, let’s say, what we call the marsh, Romney Marsh. You look at the fields down there. As you go back on years, you’ll see, say last year, this field could be flooded by an acre. We’ve been in there then in the summer or at the end of the summer.
land drained it, you look at it again a year later and you’ll see there’s no water sat there. Because it does work. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a farmer and I don’t have a farming background, but that’s where it all comes from and it is a very big thing across, I think it’s a lot of South East, a of Lincolnshire, Scotland and it’s a system that’s been around for the, I don’t know, it’s got to be over, yeah, best part of 100 years and it works.
Vikram (30:53) And then put into perspective for people that want to work with you, approach you for, know, some BBC quotes and, you know, about mobilizing, you know, it’s a matter of public record, know, with Brexit, you know, Labour became difficult, with Covid, Labour’s become difficult everywhere. There’s been the great retirement. A lot of people, you know, decided to take early retirement because the Covid gave them time to think. And so how many machines and operators, you know,
are active at peak construction and secondly the health and safety and regulation aspect, how do you ensure that you’ve got compliant labour on your solar farms?
Clark (31:33) So currently we’re a system where, so our labor force comes through, we go through the home office, we check everything. When they first do their induction on site, they have to bring their passport so the passport gets loaded into index. So thereafter, every day, if the face doesn’t match what’s on the index, they’re not allowed on site. So we ensure that everybody is…
current and they can have a working permit and they do ⁓ as we request. So they have to sign up to the RAMS Then you have your machine plant check sheets. So they have to have check sheets on all the plant. We have to have banksmen. We ensure five point PPE.
We want these guys to go home at end of the day and that’s it. Of course, we want them to do their work safely, go home to their families every day and that is paramount. We invest in this. This is something that we want them to feel comfortable with.
Vikram (32:40) And so, you know, We’ve got a huge project in construction alongside solar like HS2 and Hinckley. They’re hoovering up a lot of the labour. You know, so how do you manage multi-contractor risk? You know, how do you coordinate between the other people that are operating on site at the same time?
Clark (32:58) It’s collaboration, daily briefings and ensuring that everyone signs up to their ramps. Everyone insure…
If you’ve got, the problem is you can have someone, ⁓ that’s his fault, I wasn’t allowed for this, and I don’t stand for that. You sign up to what you do. If you don’t sign up to it, I don’t want you on our sites because I don’t want the problems we need to go, we’re employed to deliver and we deliver. We’re not going to go there to cause problems. yet, when you’ve got multiple contractors on site, if they don’t…
fall in line with what the EPC’s requirements are, I’m more than vocal. I will make my point very clear that this person, and we’ll have it out in the morning meetings, and everything’s back on track. And it is most definitely collaboration.
Vikram (33:52) So I get daily requests, know, do you know anyone selling solar farms? For the last 10 years, the market’s been very developer heavy, which is an important area. know, someone has to go do the grid connections, find appropriate land, do the deals with landowners, do all the ecological assessments, the geotechnicals. A lot of people don’t understand in EPC, there’s a lot of work happens before a shovel’s lifted. It’s actually a term in the industry, because is it shovel ready? Is it ready to build?
But there’s going to be a shock for the industry to gear up towards construction. So what does the industry need to do to improve structurally when it comes to delivering projects of 300 to 400 megawatts in scale?
Clark (34:36) I-
It’s all upfront. It’s all the enabling works. I think if you can get your enabling works in, contractors in on a set times and ensure that they, logistically, they have access to the areas they need to work. Ensure that everything, you know, and ultimately that responsibility is with the EPC. You know, we can only say we need this because we can’t get to this point. And most of the time it gets, okay, we’ll sort this for you. And they do it.
But they’ve all got to fall in line otherwise you just end up with complete mayhem. It just goes back to the days of sort of like the Wild West as it was however many years ago.
Vikram (35:22) People losing their exhausts on solar farms. Definitely not my 3 Series. What I want to ask you about is, you guys do mechanical install with the piling, you do the civil engineering, you actually build roads, you do drainage, can dig trenches for people. so the amazing thing is, we shouldn’t forget why we’re doing this. It’s a power plant at the end of the day. Especially when it’s connected to 400 kV, the inverters are growing in power, the modules are growing in power.
Yeah ⁓
We haven’t talked about the electrical side of it at all. So naturally when you’re ramping up, you will have issues with cable faults, diversions that will cause the health and safety issues from an electrical point of view, which is the silent killer, so to speak. It’s not so obvious when you’re busy moving tens of thousands of tons of soil around. what is your perspective about diverting cables if contractors hit live cables? How do you manage the health
safety aspect with respect to the electrical hazards.
Clark (36:28) straight away we’ve got to ensure, we could be doing electrical and mechanical on site, we put in cables and we’ve got our connection and testing teams that come in and commissioning. But if there’s anything obviously we’ve got to ensure that
you’ve got to do it right the first time. And I appreciate you may have other contractors on a site of big scale and they’ve got to be exposed. But it is quality. is solely quality. And if you don’t have on a large scale, you need constant…
quality. mean we use a system, everything gets uploaded, we can see and it’ll show any NCRs that required. So we know where everything is, so that we can actually go out and improve that. And we make it very transparent so the client can see it as well, or the EPC, so they can see exactly what’s going on. So if you’ve got pile refusal, you know, or we’re not getting the embedment depth on a pile. So we’ll then go back to the manufacturer
Vikram (37:26) .
Clark (37:43) say what is your preferred method, we’re in this depth, we might only be 300mm away from the surface or we could be one and a half meters at the top of the ground, but because you can’t get it in the ground. but there we set those processes in place and we’ve got to make sure that we test everything and if we have to dig back, which not that that’s wood, we haven’t had to do that yet, but if it happened it’d be investigated and…
we would have to set our processes in place.
Vikram (38:14) We shouldn’t underestimate that these are 20 year commitments for the people getting involved with these solar farms and we’re to move on to your colleagues shortly to ⁓ introduce the company in a bit more detail and what sort of things you do, what is the background and how people can engage with you. But before we get on to that, would you like to talk a bit about the battery storage element ⁓ and also mention what do you expect from your partners, what kind of people,
kind of clients you want to be working with.
Clark (38:46) I think with the BESS with the civil side of things, we can do this. I mean, we have done a mock tender for a client and that mock tender they were extremely impressed with. Their pipeline of BESS is in 27, maybe the third quarter of this year, but maybe 27. We’ve done the whole narrative. It was delivered to them very well. Where we’re at,
Obviously we’ve done all the foundation works. But we haven’t actually, we’ve got I think two BESS sites that we own. ⁓ I mean no doubt Martin will tell you about that. we…
We can do it, we have the capability and we have the connections and the collaboration of other contractors to work alongside us.
Vikram (39:46) And which
kind of clients do you want to be working with for the next year?
Clark (39:50) The clients have got to be fair and reasonable. need to have…
A good… ⁓
It’s easy for me, but a credit rating because you get somebody that’s got a very good great credit rating in Europe, but they just started in the UK, their credit rating is not very good. We’re a very high turnover business. Some of the procedures they put in or their terms that they put into their contracts is just ridiculous.
Yeah, we all agree we need a contract, the client needs safety, the EPC needs safety, but also we do. But sometimes it’s all very one-sided. So we’re in a fortunate position that we can sort of pick who we want to work with. And I mean, of our current EPCs we’re working with, we have a very good relationship and hopefully we’ll continue that very good relationship with a lot of work ahead of us.
So, but I think we do, we do, we are fortunate enough to pick who we want to work with. I just don’t want be exposed to any risk.
Vikram (41:04) And in terms of partners, what do you expect from your suppliers and your contractors?
Clark (41:08) ⁓ Reliability, quality and honesty. They’re the three key things because I think without that you can’t deliver what you need to deliver and we’ve got a reputation to hold and if these people aren’t delivering then ultimately it falls back on us.
Vikram (41:32) Absolutely. Thanks very much for that chat today and I’m going to move on to talk to your colleagues now.
Clark (41:37) So, thank you.
Vikram (41:40) So.
Vikram Kumar (00:00) Welcome to the Future of Solar Photovoltaics podcast. My name is Vic Ramkumar. I have the absolute pleasure of welcoming again Mr. Valerio Polizzi. ⁓ Valerio, welcome.
Valerio Pelizzi (00:11) Thank you, Vick, I’m very pleased to be back.
Vikram Kumar (00:14) Great. It was over a year ago since we recorded our first podcast with you. In that time, we’ve been listened to in 89 countries and over 821 cities. We’ve had massive reception. We are ranking number one on Google in many countries. It’s a volunteer run initiative purely for us to network with our colleagues to pass information in an honorable way. What has been your reaction since the last podcast?
Valerio Pelizzi (00:45) Well, ⁓ I’m not going to lie here. The first thing that comes to my mind is I’ve been overwhelmed, really. This is the word to describe because…
I wasn’t expecting that much ⁓ traction. ⁓ You start whatever work you do, whatever job you have, you try to make your, to add something to the industry you’re working in. And the fact that my podcast has been listened to so many countries and that by so many people is really overwhelming. mean, now you always sort of like having the imposter
syndrome or something, know, or at least I have. And this is basically the opposite. People are listening because probably I had something to tell, something ⁓ to transfer to people and professionals.
Vikram Kumar (01:47) have the statistics in front of me right now. I could tell you, you are the second most listened to podcast from maybe 15, 16 episodes we’ve done so far. Only one person is ahead of you. That’s Mr. Clive Cosby, but he doesn’t count because he’s a customer.
and he was a customer, he’s now doing module handling technology and for you to be neck and neck with the customer and pull one and two positions, it’s really something because Clive was project director or manager for Cleve Hill Solar Farm, the biggest project ever built in the UK, one of the biggest in Europe, 300 megawatts bigger than the last big one.
⁓ So of course the whole world is chasing after Clive so they want to listen to him and then straight after that project he was going to EDF for Longfield Solar Farm which is even bigger and so everyone including you and me are chasing after Clive and you are based on just the content of what you were saying in the word of mouth you know you are the second most listened to podcast
Valerio Pelizzi (02:36) Yeah.
Vikram Kumar (02:48) So far and so you should tell us you know, what is what is your secret? long have you been in the industry? You know and what are your current activities?
Valerio Pelizzi (02:53) No.
Well again, that’s why I’m overwhelmed, you know, because most of the times when you listen to podcasts, when you go to events, you are a speaker at events, conferences, you know, there is always people listening to you because of the company you are working for.
In my case, I’m basically on my own for the last six years, no more than six years. They’re really genuinely interested in what I have to tell. So that’s why I’m very flattered but also overwhelmed because I wasn’t expecting ⁓ that kind of reaction from professional, from people.
again, mostly because I’m now, as you correctly said, I’m chasing now people rather than people that chasing me because being a developer, that is what you are looking, you seeking. You’re seeking investors, you’re seeking ⁓ exit buyer for your project, you are seeking manufacturer to help you out with, you know, favorable framework agreement, but definitely it’s people not chasing you. Let’s put it in this way.
Vikram Kumar (04:07) But you are in high demand now because developers with experience are worth their weight in gold if they are in front of the right people and hopefully we are going to be doing that soon. So before we go into the main topics of the day which is agrivoltaics, energy economics and know project development to bring a real depth to what we want to do in the next year or so.
Could you tell us your current commercial situation? Last time you said you had a company called Ingeb and you had an involvement with another company called PowerG. You are really quite humble, but I see on LinkedIn you have a network in Rome, in New York. So give us a bit more specifics about your current commercial position.
Valerio Pelizzi (04:51) Yeah, PowerG is basically my main role, like a full-time job almost. With PowerG is an integrated developer and we are actively working in the Italian and US market with the goal to become a small IPP. In Italy we have already… ⁓
some projects, we developing some projects on our own along with some other projects for clients, for exit buyers basically and in US we are following the same path we are trying to get our project the NTP as they call it so notice to proceed opposed to RTB in Europe which is ready to build plus developing Greenfield some assets. As a technology we are pretty agnostic meaning we can develop PV
we can develop BES, we can develop PV plus BES. It depends on the condition, on the market, what is required, on the land itself I would say, because it’s not really a decision you can make not considering the land or the area where you are. The area actually probably drives you more on the decision.
what kind of technology you want to develop and also the extension of the land itself. Clearly 300 megawatts pairs is not the same extension of 300 megawatts peak of PV. While in the UK, know,
Ingep is just my own company, so it’s not really a big name. I’m developing, I’m trying to, we try to bring in the UK also the concept of AgriPV, which we are really seeking in our project in Italy.
Vikram Kumar (06:45) And what is IPP exactly? You said you’re IPP in Italy. Is it the case in the US as well? And you want to first tell us, know, what is it? What does it take to be IPP? Do you have a license to trade power in the Italian market?
Valerio Pelizzi (07:00) I don’t know, IPV is just an acronym to independent power producers as you know and all the people know. It’s just ⁓ a decision, it’s just a strategic decision. You don’t need to have any license in any country I think. It’s just a matter that you want to start Greenfield Develop and develop, get to ready to build, build your project, own your project for you know… ⁓
the lifetime or whatever is the strategy of the company selling at a certain point, but basically being an integrated entity doing from scratch everything, from the land down to an operational site, an operational asset producing, generating energy.
Vikram Kumar (07:47) So if you’re holding your own projects as an independent power producer, what is the revenue stream? Who do you sell the energy to? To the grid? To a commercial user? How does this work? ⁓
Valerio Pelizzi (07:58) You
have a few options here. You can decide to go through a PPA, so having ⁓ a trader buying your energy and then they will sell to whoever. You can go merchant and sell directly to the grid if the economics are there. You can decide to work behind the meter for example, not even using the grid, so generating energy for large ⁓ consumers.
it’s again, it’s depending. I would say that the most important thing is the economics and the figures on your financial model. If the famous IRR is good enough, you’re fine.
Vikram Kumar (08:40) Fantastic, and now that we want to get into development and agrivoltaics more specifically, to paint a kind of strategic picture, in the last year, because we did so many different podcasts, and we are now working more at the investor level, especially in high voltage, 400 kV and 132 kV, there is a shortage of projects that have reliable grid connections. I did massive research using AI, but also my own research on the Office of National Statistics,
Valerio Pelizzi (09:10) you
Vikram Kumar (09:11) We are not far away from Russia at The airplanes, drones are invading NATO aerospace. It is a tough situation because if one NATO country is attacked, the whole of NATO has to go to war. War and energy is now inseparable more than ever before. From this basis, I did the research, what is our primary energy use in the UK? Primary energy use has
definition by the International Energies Agency. on our blog as well on VentusLTD.com. You can go have a read. You don’t need to read my massive monologues. You can just put this in AI and they can summarize for you. Even do some economic calculations. So no one has an excuse anymore that they haven’t got time to absorb data.
because artificial intelligence is also a military technology, together with research in quantum mechanics and data centers and all of these things, because the energy is really accelerating very fast. From this, I learned that in 2019, the whole of the UK used 1,644 terawatt hours of primary energy. And if we change this to electrification for sectors that can easily be electrified, other than, you airplanes and ships,
we can maybe reduce 70 % of the primary energy use with electrification. so 1644 terawatt hours sounds like a massive number, but the UK is a small country. And because the energy politics is so intensive, the sobering reality is, let’s put this into context, the whole of London Underground is moving with only 1.2 terawatt hours. If you put this into 30 pence per kilowatt hour or 7 pence per kilowatt hour or negative energy pricing,
It’s massive numbers, 1.2 terawatt hours for the underground to move the trains, but it’s still nothing compared to the 1,644 terawatt hours we use in the whole of the UK, which is 70 % inefficient because of the fossil fuel economics and lobbies. And if you apply this to now bigger markets in the US or in China, in India, you start to see why we’re destroying the environment because the numbers are so astronomical. So from your perspective,
What is your view on the energy economics in the UK because we are based here and how do you compare this to the Italian market?
Valerio Pelizzi (11:30) You touched a very interesting point about the know the the the lobbyist the energy lobbyist that is the the whole point ⁓ It’s not a matter of having fossil or renewables clearly we are all for renewables because it’s much better for everyone and because also much more efficient the fossil fuels, but the problem is exactly about energy itself and
It’s a story very old about the grid efficiency and so on. But the real point is we need to switch from a system where there are few central generation points and moving energy around to a more distributed generation. Meaning you don’t need to really to run ⁓ hundreds of kilometers of lines to bring energy
everywhere. You need to bring generation points almost everywhere. That’s why so important the integration with renewables. You don’t need a massive, ⁓ clearly we are biased, but we don’t need a 500 megawatts nuclear plant in one point and then I need to waste 30 % of all the energy just in grid and in efficiency and transformation, voltage transformation stepping down. You can have ⁓
even like 20 small PV or wind or whatever generation, assuming even fossil fuels, small generation points everywhere so that the energy doesn’t have to travel around the country to bring to everyone. There will be a big shift.
Clearly going into the economics, it will become a matter of, if I do smaller generation plants, what does it mean? It means that I need to have the economy of scale, of course, because no one really wants to run. ⁓
a not-profit business. so this is down to the engineering. Down to the engineering means any project has to be, any asset has to be efficient. And to be efficient clearly has to be from renewables because the fossil fuels are just barely making the numbers only because of the economy of scale. If they are going to be smaller and smaller, I don’t think they can be financially viable.
viable. So that’s why the lobbyists are pushing ⁓ against everything really, because they need to take their leadership. This is something that probably, the most important thing about this is the narrative that is going to the public opinion, to the public really, because if you speak to anyone not in the industry, they really don’t grasp the fact that
all those massive companies are profiting on them just because they need to cover their efficiency, need to cover all the old grids, they basically are covering their own, I wouldn’t say mistakes, because clearly the historical evolution of any grid is just following, just being like that.
It’s been easier at the beginning of the industrial revolution having one big power plant and then just bringing energy all around rather than ⁓ building two, three, four, five, ten, fifty small generation plants. The public doesn’t really understand that most of the cost, as you correctly say, is just wasted because of the inefficiencies.
And those lobbies are also making it difficult for companies that want to enter the market with much favorable pricing for the retail customers. it’s always like a battle on those grounds. The perception that the public has about renewables, about fossil fuels, about the grid. I’m pretty sure if we are going to talk to anyone, say, do you know that the
UK grid is very old and needs massive upgrades. They probably don’t know. They probably say, we like everything in the country, like everything in all industries. The answer is actually no, not really. It’s just, you know…
fact that no one really took care or really thought that it was an important thing to keep the grid up and running. At the end of the day they just charge the retail customers so they pay more and they cover the costs.
Vikram Kumar (16:28) Fantastic. think last podcast I listened to couple of times, especially to edit the transcript, which was a good revision for me because you can speak five times faster than you can write, especially with me, it’s probably 10 times faster I speak than I can write. And so maybe it’s the caffeine and the thousand milligrams of vitamin C, who knows. But you said some important things, which is about agrivoltaics in the past. We talk about that shortly. think you’re speaking the day after tomorrow ⁓ is the movie.
as well but you know with Putin around you don’t know if there’s a day after tomorrow anymore. We are speaking at an agriculture conference ⁓ the day after tomorrow we’re going to get into that but coming before to your earlier podcast notes which are ringing in my mind because I made a recent revision to correct the AI transcripts which is wrong in many cases is you said you know many governments like to ban PV on prime agricultural land but you said things like peppers they grow very well in the
and you know I find this efficiency topic very fascinating because 70 % of the energy is wasted in the internal combustion engine ⁓ heat pumps are three or five times depending on the weather more efficient than gas boilers
And so we need to talk about efficiency and people make jokes about solar but they forget that the whole planet is solar powered. Every plant, every tree is growing up from solar energy. So one of the things that is awe-inspiring is solar is not different from farming. with this aspect…
You know, we are all trying to connect to the high voltage centralized grid. What the developers do is they exhaust the medium voltage, the 11 and 33 kV in the UK, maybe 10 and 30 kV in Germany and other countries. The voltage is different, but the concept is still the same. have medium voltage, which is exhausted, there’s no more grid.
They want to go high voltage. High voltage is a big, big boys and girls game because you make one mistake, your substation is going down. You can have a case like we had in Heathrow, 1,400 airplanes cannot land because the substation has blown up because of some failure and in moisture ingress. So high voltage is a big money game. Media voltage is exhausted. So we need to now think about behind the meter. We need to think about agri-voltaics. So now, can you introduce your topics for the conference the day after tomorrow?
and agrivoltaics as a topic in general, know, is it now legal in Italy? Can you do agrivoltaics now?
Valerio Pelizzi (19:03) Tomorrow I’ll be speaking at Solar and Storage Live conference. They’re making a series around the world that this will be in Italy and my personal contribution will be about me and other professionals we will have in a panel on… ⁓
AgriPV really, the real integration. Well, AgriPV has been always, let’s put it this way, legal everywhere, meaning it’s your decision if you want to keep farming under the panels. The difference is that now it’s becoming, from a technical perspective and also a financial perspective, more viable because the cost of truckers went down. Clearly, if you want to integrate farming with…
with energy generation means that you have to change something. Most of the investors want to maximize the investment and try to profit as much as they can. in simple words, they want to pack the land with panels instead of leaving space for farming and the machinery needed for farming. basically now with truckers and with new panels,
the technology is much easier because the costs are really comparable now. The AgriPV is an interesting topic, something that I always felt…
strongly. mean we are working in the renewable energy industry. We want to clean the world. That’s it. Clean the world. Having a clean world means also having proper farming rather than you know intensive ⁓ farming and stuff and hormones and this kind of ⁓ chemical addictive. And so yeah my intervention will be mostly ⁓ on this one. ⁓
It’s something that I think they can work very easily. You mentioned before my last podcast, my first podcast, I mentioned the peppers. It’s something that I learned from farmers because you cannot invent ugly PV in a meaning. are tech guy, are engineers, are building up a generation plant. ⁓ But if you want to have a real ugly PV, have to work also with farmers or with…
you should have a partner that knows that because AgriPV is not just a label you put on, you know, I would put trackers, I would put down, you know, grass or whatever, something, it’s AgriPV, no, it doesn’t work like that. Works in a way that I have a land, a farming land,
Depending on where I am in the region, what area I am, what kind of crops you are growing, and then based on that, you decide what kind of agri-peat you can put on. Clearly, again, I’ll make you the example first of Italy because it’s far ahead compared to the UK.
If you are growing wheat in North Italy, you cannot have an ugly PV. Because you don’t have that big of radiation, you don’t have enough to have a good quality wheat. While on the contrary, if you have wheat in Central and South Italy, ugly PV is a viable choice. Because for several reasons.
extremely hot weather now because of the climate change so you sort of shield from extreme weather events the the crops and so basically means AgriPV is working with wheat everywhere? No. Is AgriPV working with wheat at all? Yeah it depends. If you are in north Italy? No. If you are in Italy or south Italy? Yes. So the the whole point is you need to decide the AgriPV
based on what kind of crops you want to grow. Another example that I heard of, is actually a study, scientific study on that one is they were doing AgriPV on vineyards in central north Italy. It wasn’t working properly because basically it was changing the properties of the grapes. ⁓
some flavors, basically they were creating a very bad quality end product. While on the opposite, they went to the South Italy, they made the exact same system, and they found out that the quality stayed the same or improved, actually, on the wine at the end game. So again, it’s just a matter of, AgriPV means study,
First of all, where you are, the crops you have or you want to do to farm and then integrate your design into it. This is real agri PV. Or you can make what I call the fake agri PV or the green washing, which is an interesting topic. I see a lot of projects in Italy just poorly failing because they didn’t…
They sold and they authorized projects as Agri PV, but they weren’t working with ⁓ farmers. They just put, okay, Agri PV, will make these crops down there. But those crops are not growing because they were, I don’t know exactly all the projects in detail, but it just doesn’t work because they didn’t study beforehand. even green washing to me is always throwing a bunch of sheep.
or livestock into the plant, say, okay, know, it’s ugly PV because we are doing, we are farming, we grazing. It depends. Grazing, and this can make you an example, two projects we are addressing right now, we are grazing on two projects, Central Italy. What we do, we chose a local ⁓ breed of sheep, which is actually also in the verge of extinction.
We ⁓ created inside ⁓ the plant ⁓ a ⁓ enclosed area where there are the veterinary facilities, know, genic facilities, something that can be controlled on top of the welfare of the animal. This is AgriPV in a meaning of I know what the welfare of the animals is. I know how they should be.
breathed or you know.
you know, all the things they have to ⁓ be in a normal like ⁓ grazing business. And then on that kind of foundation, we adapt the design of the solar PV. So basically it’s not, means you’re not bringing agriculture into a PV, but you bring PV into the agriculture. And this is a big shift.
Again, another big shift that needs to be understood by the public.
This is the main point. You mentioned about the authorities. I’m just a long monologue now from my side. Politics normally don’t really understand that. Again, for example, the particular about Italy is they made a law for the AKPV. They set certain parameters to be…
be considered as an Agri-PV, which make…
I wouldn’t say no sense, but it depends on what you are growing. Again, the example of peppers. To have a real agri PV for peppers, I should cover all the fields with panels. But I can’t because to get the planning permission as agri PV on agricultural land, I need to cover the total surface of the panels has to be no more than 30%.
that 40 % of the total land. So now, if I have to go at only 40%, how can make shade for peppers? I can’t. Which means it would be a real ugly PV, technically speaking, from both farmers and… But it won’t be for the regulation. So this is really what we are facing. In the UK, I would say, there is no rule.
Vikram Kumar (27:56) Yep.
Valerio Pelizzi (28:09) But again, there is a lot of people having, you know, try to solve the project through for the communities like, oh, we’ll have livestocks, we’ll have grazing, we’ll have whatever it is. The reality is, it’s not really here. Or at least, you know, I see there are a lot of plants, which is still good. I’m not saying the opposite, that having like beehives, they’re trying to, you know, biodiversity. is all good. But this is, I would say…
Vikram Kumar (28:20) Mm-hmm.
you
Valerio Pelizzi (28:39) My personal opinion of AgriPV is more like really integrated farming or something similar. I’m trying to do the first real AgriPV in the UK, meaning a site where there will be a combined harvester going around for people that doesn’t know what is a combined harvester. It’s basically a machine which is a head of 12 meters wide.
and the height of the tractor itself I think is like five or six meters. So point is real farming on a PV side, so real agri-PV.
Vikram Kumar (29:20) Fantastic what you’re doing now. It’s quite Amazing especially with the podcast because the AI or artificial intelligence is transcribing what we are saying Unfortunately, it means you have to spend some hours to correct some of the errors. It’s not precise maybe 60 70 percent Accuracy, it’s quite frightening that everything that you’re saying will go into the internet and be read by every artificial Intelligence program from Russia from China from us. So you are literally forming
the in this sense. that’s what the no one has a reason to be. I think there’s now a hangover of the Instagram, the Twitter or X generation because now there’s a there’s a sort of hangover that everyone wants to do everything in a few sentences or do everything in the attention span of TikTok.
do everything quickly, know, it’s this tokenization of the economy. Young people don’t go out meeting each other anymore. They sit on video calls on TikTok asking for tokens, you know. So now the comeback from this, you know, is that, you know, we have to pay attention to what the future generation, own children are doing. Attention spans are much lower. And I think artificial intelligence is the perfect counter attack or countermeasure to this because you give someone 10,000 words and they don’t have an excuse anymore. They can just
just
upload this to chatgpt or deepseq or whatever and you can ask for a summary for very long topics. You don’t need to say I don’t have time to read 10,000 pages anymore when you can split this into a thousand pages each.
and AI can summarize for you within a few seconds. So it’s getting into the realm of quantum mechanics. Whatever you imagine, you can do it now. But I find this quite funny because, you know, our podcast is becoming quite big in the small utility scale sector. There are not many decision makers. We have close to 100 % market penetration. Now we have a WhatsApp group of 114 people. These are very senior people, you that you were struggling to get an appointment with. Now they all want to join our WhatsApp group. It’s clearly what you’re giving to them, Valerian.
has a value because it’s without agenda, without attachment and you know anything you do without attachment is it purifies your intentions and this is very valuable in corporate environments where trust is very difficult. You said about bad grapes or sour grapes in North Italy and sweet grapes and nice grapes in southern Italy hopefully we don’t upset anyone with the sour grapes.
Valerio Pelizzi (31:50) No, no, no, I didn’t say
sour or stuff thing, so don’t put in my mouth something that I didn’t say. I said that Agrippi on vineyard in North Italy didn’t work because they basically worsened the quality of the grape, while in the South actually they kept or even improving slightly.
Vikram Kumar (31:59) Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
so you have
better wine in southern Italy.
Valerio Pelizzi (32:11) You have
amazing wines everywhere. Someone can be with PV on top, someone no.
Vikram Kumar (32:18) Yes,
right, right. Okay, so the solar wine is in southern Italy, so no agrivoltaics if you want the good wine from northern Italy. What is the revenue streams? Like how do you talk about, when you go to a farmer, the farmer has enough challenges, he or she is trying not to be bankrupt from the bad weather or from…
the seed prices, know, is, Jeremy Clarkson he likes his V8s, but he did a tremendous documentary about farmers, Clarkson’s Farm, which was exciting for me, you know, energy prices even affecting fertilizers. Farmers are getting bankrupt because if they cannot afford the fertilizer and the seeds for the following year, they cannot get their money back, and so you can have negative pricing.
even in agriculture. And then there’s the quality aspect as well, as you said with the wheat and so on. If the quality is not right, you don’t have the sufficient protein content, you are in deep trouble because the value you get for your wheat is different. So in your case, how do you go to such a farmer in the position of just staying alive and you sell them solar? Where does the revenue streams come from?
Valerio Pelizzi (33:23) You
got exactly the point. It’s about surviving. mean, most of the farmers in Italy are just running out of business.
I was speaking with a landowner that has some land which is completely left on its own now and he was telling me, you know, when I was young I was used to go, I love hiking, I was used to go to the mountain near my town and I was looking around all fields, properly farmed, you know, now I’m going to the same spot, I just see…
desert lands, abandoned lands, because no one is doing anymore. In Italy also there is a, I’m not really sure about the UK, because it’s not my industry, but I learned that in Italy there is basically the…
the farming union or trade or whatever you want to call basically they set the pricing they set the price for the crops to be sold to large supermarket groups but those pricing are very low and if you want to do a proper farming you you really struggle that’s why they just close the business and do something else with AgriPV or with the energy on top of that they have those extra
revenue stream that can help the business to stay afloat, to be even profitable. And especially Italy is one of the, well, I wouldn’t say the most affected country in Europe, because also here in the UK we saw the reality of climate change, but in Italy is basically there is the temperatures going up and up, the rains. ⁓
basically no longer distributed throughout the year, but they’re just concentrated in few, not even few days, but in few hours. There are quantity of water falling down from the sky in two hours that was used to be like in three days or something. ⁓ In Italian they make this neologism, which is like water bombs. It’s no longer like raining, but there are water bombs.
So like a bucket of water you just throw into the land. So with all the problems they can bring, because extreme weather, they just damage the crops. And even from a pure mechanical point of view, if you have panels on top, sort of they shield the crops from those extreme events. And that’s why it’s so important, ⁓ really pushing towards the right direction.
Vikram Kumar (36:13) It’s amazing what you say. I’m coming from an Indian background. know what monsoons are. People are riding bicycles in water that is hip deep. So we have a rough understanding of what massive rain can be. But I’ve never heard the term water bombs. I’ve heard weather bombs in the US news reports. And I think on the greenwashing aspect, it’s important as well that we are creating a good reputation as well. You could throw some sheep on a solar farm. But if you have a transformer on fire in the back,
on the news this will not be a good look. know obviously solar and wind has much lower risk than oil and gas failure but still we are in a market which is very much commercially driven with boom and bust cycles and it does have a self-fulfilling greed cycles where people are focused on just staying alive and then they build projects which are bankrupting the company and then which is why you have so many people constantly unstable and now with inflation as well more and more people are
our self-employed. it’s important that we are creating a good message for people to be able to have confidence in the solar market. But in terms of the revenue stream for the farmer, what does the farmer do? Does the farmer take just the land rentals? Does the farmer get a share in the energy costs? Do you export the energy? Do you use the energy within the farm itself? If it’s a large farm, how is the energy moving in agri-voltaics?
Valerio Pelizzi (37:41) Well, that is a question more for the commercial people rather than me. But I mean, you have a bunch of options. You can do whatever you want. mean, they can quantify how much land they are losing for farming and you can compensate that by giving them a premium, maybe. You can give them a share of the revenues, of the energy sales. It’s still up to the…
to the personal negotiation with the landlord. What else you can do? mean, there are a things you can put together. The things is, again, not trying to take advantage of the farmers, trying to work. The reality is, let’s try and start to work together. Because so far, at least in my experience, and this is across the globe, not only UK or Italy or other countries, is that…
There are a bunch of cowboys, as I call them, that just trying to really to get to maximize the profit, try to to snatch lands and contracts for people just ignorant in a sense that they don’t know the economics behind the renewables or the energy industry in general. And this is something that has to change because this is something that builds up a bad reputation for renewables. renewables are…
are just eating all the farming land. We cannot farm anymore. No, this is not the reality. Cowboys are doing that and we need really to get rid of those people as soon as possible. Hopefully the market now will kick them out. But it’s the fact that we are not taking farming land. We want to make your life, your business more comfortable, not struggling with financial shortage. That is the…
That is the message we have to push forward. And this is so important because it’s the only way we can make also the public understanding the good that the integration can bring. also, ⁓ I’m talking in a way that we always have to teach people, we need to bring our message out and so on. It’s not only that we have to teach or trying to be on the…
to ⁓ bring our message out. It’s also we need to learn some stuff. Meaning, I love PV sites that have beehives, biodiversity, have sheep grazing so they can avoid cost of moving the grass. It’s all good. The important thing is this is a PV site. We are trying to be
as much as integrated that we can into the land, so using different things, but not call them ugly PV. That’s the, mean, we have to avoid at all cold-screen washing because that is bring you on the other side of the truth. You will be lying to people. You’re not doing, you’re not doing ugly PV. But you’re doing PV, but you’re using your land.
to having other ⁓ bodies taking advantage of your site. the sheep grazing, bees, biodiversity. So it’s important to call things how they really are, not trying to have like a mask on it and just to put because of the trend. Now, call AgriPV is trendy. How I’m developing AgriPV, really?
Vikram Kumar (41:11) Mm-hmm.
Thank
Valerio Pelizzi (41:33) If you have like an agronomist, I don’t know if it’s in English the correct word, you have an agronomist working with you? No. Okay, so tell me, how then you can be an agri-pv if you don’t have an agronomist telling you what crops you can farm in this area? You know, with your design most importantly. Because you can either say…
Vikram Kumar (41:40) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Valerio Pelizzi (41:58) Okay, I want to have this design. Is there any crops that in this area can work with my design? Yes. Okay, fine. I always prefer the way around, meaning that let’s see which is the crops that are the best, that have the best, sorry, what are the area where is the best climate for what kind of crops and based on that, making the design around it. That is…
what I would like more. But again, I won’t mind if there is people doing it the way around, as long as it’s a real agricultural project, not only an energy project.
Vikram Kumar (42:40) you
course, solar is a green technology and it’s possible to greenwash with solar as well. at the end of the day, wherever there’s power, political power, literal power, electrical power, and there’s money, there’s going to be politics. like in the early days, Erin Mahan, who did a podcast with us, I approached her about DC fire safety, which is a separate topic, massive on its own right. There’s even Sandy, a nuclear weapons lab.
they are working on wildfire prevention because know DC solar and wildfire it’s also a climate change phenomena and so you know you are people like yourself you know we’re very you’re very humble but you are founders of industry you know there’s a saying you know in in Sanskrit that the the hand that serves is holier than the lips that pray so now these these these definitions are going to be the future good or bad is based on our actions and how we conduct ourselves
under pressure and so you have solar which people just throw some sheep in there because they want to cut the grass or they don’t want to they want to save money from cutting the grass that’s why those sheep are there this is not agri PV that you got agrivoltaics which is dedicated design incorporating farming you know I want to dig deep into that because I don’t want to mention specific project names because people are very anxious and insecure about the decisions they might have made especially under pressure but in the last three years three
I worked on three very interesting projects two were below sea level they have sea defense walls or dikes one in the Netherlands one in the UK and these are below sea level projects and Farming is very difficult in these areas because the groundwater levels very very high and in this process I met two lovely guys One’s called Clark Frost the other was Andy Nicholson. They work for a company called FGS or Heathcote Holdings where they have these massive machinery
similar
in size to combine harvesters where they can do civil engineering for you they can you know do drainage so you can make the land farmable to manage the water flow you talked about the water bomb weather where you can have a huge water fall on your farmland within a couple of hours and you know how you manage this you have to adjust the civils and the water drainage and these guys the civil guys are very important with that respect so
So there is things we can do to improve the land. I also learned from a pig farm, farming is not always healthy for the land. If you’re constantly farming for meat, you’re using ammonia and fertilizers, farming itself is one of the biggest damage.
damaging activities to the environment. It’s literally poisoning your water supplies, poisoning the land. You have to do crop rotation to allow the land to heal and to recover. And so this is where flower meadows and, like you said, the bee are keeping all that can come in. But instead of just being general, because you are an engineer, you are in the industry for over 15 years, if you’re going more specific into the mechanical design, you mentioned trackers for agri-PV. How does this
Is this unusual? Are there really high mounting structures?
Valerio Pelizzi (46:05) Well, it depends. It depends what you’re growing. I mean, ⁓ if you are, for example, if you’re talking about animals, if you are grazing sheep, it means that you have to be probably the minimum height of the panels has to be like 80 centimeters, while if you have ⁓ cattle, you have to be like 1.3 meters, if ⁓ I remember correctly. So that is it.
this long solid-shore meaning it decides the structure and the design of your system so you will have the height of the trackers. I’m always talking about trackers for one reason not because you know again they are trendy they are all doing that compared to fixed-steel structure but it’s also a matter of financial stuff now with cost of trackers being comparable to fixed-steel structure you know the the I don’t know
on average 20 % increase in generation make the project more financially viable. This has to be important because everyone is doing their own share of profit and clearly if you’re doing Agri PV you are losing some of the potential revenues from a classic PV. So having trackers will help you
your business case, your revenues really. This is the main reason why it’s better having trackers. Most of the trackers now have like one pole, a single pole, basically all three poles depending on different designs. the point is they really…
Much lighter than before they’re much less steel compared to a fixed steel structure that probably has more steel I saw a few designs where they have like a sort of like tracker approach to fixed steel structure But in that respect, you know I’m not sure how it works because to me from an engineering perspective really not going into details that looks like you can make only short strings on those but again, I’m just talking
without any knowledge. ⁓ And also because, to be honest, I think that trackers are the way forward for, especially for, rugby.
Vikram Kumar (48:36) You said last time you spent five or ten years doing engineering and enrollment. You don’t like books so much, you like to implement what you learn instead of only learn about it. And no one is more true in this aspect than the farmer because they are always gambling what happens in the next season’s harvest. They don’t know what happens with this season’s harvest, but they have to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds for big farms, a similar ratios for smaller farms, on seeds, on fertilizer for next
Valerio Pelizzi (48:45) Thanks
Vikram Kumar (49:06) season already. And so there’s a huge gamble and there’s an entrepreneurial aspect where you have to decide which plot you’re going to do what in the following season and how will you break even for the season after. Many people are in farming not for the profit but they have many generations of farmers they want to carry on farming. They want to know if they will even have enough cash flow to be in business the following season. This isn’t capitalism this is almost less than communism because you
You don’t know if you survive from one year to the next, and eventually the bank takes your land and then you are back to being a peasant on farmland again. So the point is the farmer’s not going to know the difference between a tracker and fixed-tilled and bifacial modules and monofacials. They can obviously learn some big companies grew from farms, but most farmers, are thinking more on an agricultural practical logistics sense. At what point…
do you do the yield analysis? You clearly demonstrated something clever earlier, which is you knew the grapes are sour if you agri-PV in North Italy, but they are sweet if you make the same installation in Southern Italy. Who does this kind of yield analysis so the farm owners can make a decision to incorporate agri-PV when they buy fertilizer or plan planting for a specific plot?
Valerio Pelizzi (50:31) Well, this example I mentioned earlier is led by university, so by the academics. There will be a professor that will be speaking with me on Wednesday about that. let’s say that most of the innovation, this kind of studies, lies on the academics rather than on people. But coming back to your point about farmers, they don’t care if it’s truckers, fixed-heel, whatever it is. The important thing for them is
If they work together, if we are working together, we are sort of like de-risking their business because ⁓ first of all, they have an extra secure stream, revenue stream, because they have the renting of the land used by AgriPV or, know, they are coming from the AgriPV, whatever is the agreement they find. But again, they can be less exposed
to extreme weather. Again, if you have panels making some shade, if you very dry summer, you use less water for the crops. So it is a savings you have. Or again, on the opposite, if you have like hail coming, panels now, most of them unless you have very big hail, they are shielding the crops. So the hail is not going directly.
to own the crop itself, own the crops itself. So again, it’s another, the risks, the risking factor into the farming. So clearly, again, it’s still a gamble, it’s still their business, but you can help them in taking the decision or help them to, you know, to be a little bit, I will say peace of mind, but much better than let’s see what happen next year or next season. So that is the real point.
And this is apart from the study you do. Most of the academics are trying to make ⁓ a base knowledge about almost every kind of the science, every kind of crops. Clearly, depending also on the most viable crops, can have how much they will be affected by having a ⁓ PV on site or not.
But the farmers to me have already the knowledge because the farmers knows what they need. Again, example of the peppers, peppers need shade. Example of wheat, wheat needs sunshine. So if you have enough sunshine to grow a proper good quality wheat, you can have Agri-Bee V. If Agri-Bee V is not guarantee you that, clearly you can’t.
So another important point I want to stress out is Agri-PV is not the solution to everything. There will be still land where Agri-PV is not possible, is not worthy. Unless again you’re a cowboy and you want to convince the farmer of something different. This is another thing we need to learn as an industry.
We need to learn to say no. Not all the land is suitable. We need to find the land that is suitable to what we can build, really. And clearly, again, what I was saying earlier, adapting the design based on everything, not just based on the financial metrics.
Vikram Kumar (54:18) of course you can build a perfect solar farm or perfect agri-pv but you know i’m starting to learn you know i need to pay as much attention to the commercial aspect as the technical aspect because if you build a beautiful 50 megawatt solar farm if we have no grid where does the energy go
Valerio Pelizzi (54:38) Exactly. This is another point that is struggling, at least here in the UK. It’s basically coming back of what we were discussing earlier, know, at the beginning of this chat between us about how you structure your system. This system has been structured in the late 19th century, and nothing has changed from that. Everyone just, know, this is the way we do. No, this is not the way we do.
This is the way that was suitable in the 19th, in the end of the 19th century. It’s no longer now. But just, know, because of renewables or because of, again, ⁓ it’s agnostic what kind of generation and fuel you want to use. It’s just a matter that now everyone, let’s say, needs energy. So you need to rethink the system itself. And I’m really in favor of…
again, regardless of the source of power, you need to be smaller and distributed. This is the key to me for any grid to work. Because again, on an economy of scale, even if your is old, but you have to do 10 kilometers instead of 800, it makes the difference. The losses are still the same in ⁓ percentage, but in absolute terms, you are…
losing some money but not a massive amount of money. So distribution to me is the answer regardless and clearly you know upgrading works to upgrade the grid would be very welcomed anyway especially from me being an engineer try to be as mass efficient as I can so having a grid that’s losing 40 % in just in pure losses because of the
old stuff, not upgrades, and this is across the world, again, it’s not a UK issue.
makes the difference.
Vikram Kumar (56:43) I find that humans are not very different to animals. We might wear suits and live in cities and in houses, but we are still very territorial. You can see there’s been siblings in corporate companies, but also you can see this on a macro level as well. I can sell to you now cables which can take the energy from here to Rome, from London to Rome, with subsea cables or with 500 or 400 kV. The technical point is not the limitation. We already proven this with the internet.
you know, we can send a message from here to London to Australia within a few milliseconds. We have already a global grid with the internet, so to make a global energy grid, it’s not technically difficult. The difficult part is the political aspect. So if you have a ⁓ solar farm and you use the energy locally for dairy, processing, cheese making, whatever, you don’t have so many losses. But, you know, even with very small losses, we can send, you know, 400 kV, 500 kV lines.
When you are crossing 30-40 landowners, all of those people want to be paid. If you are going on the DNO or distribution companies land or national grids area, all these people want to know that you are complying to the standards. There is a commercial aspect, gates that you have to cross, which is also adding a political margin.
which means you are uneconomical from this point anymore. And so I reflect a lot what’s going on because there is, people are saying there’s now huge under-employment, people have jobs.
but they’re doing less and less work and in the future with AI maybe people will be on universal basic incomes and AI does all the work. What do humans do? So you said an important point earlier. In the 19th century, starting with the Industrial Revolution in the UK, funded by colonialism, I am a product of this colonialism from India. Apparently the British took 45 trillion, it’s a controversial figure, but over 200 years, quite a lot. This funded the Industrial Revolution together with the other
colonies in the UK with the railways and everything. And, you know, you had electrification with Edison, arguing about DC and AC in New York and America. And, you know, we made this centralized grid. Tesla was winning with the high voltage aspect. And we all don’t need to be farmers anymore because it’s urbanization. know, China and India still working on urbanization where people are leaving the farms, going to the cities. But there’s now a shock. And the shock is
In COVID, people realize you can work from home now and cities are now hollow. The high streets are now empty. So, you know, we need to rethink how we do things because the centralized way is now changing very, very dramatically. And so the grid now, we need to plug into this 400 kb network or whatever is a huge limiting point because as you say, it’s designed to for big infrastructure, not necessary.
a smaller infrastructure but it’s quite fascinating that now we only need do 50 gigawatts of solar in the UK in the next 10 years, probably even less if the politics is changing with the fossil fuel lobby and demographic changes and so on maybe we have four years to do 40 gigawatts. There are projects now in the pipeline you can go to the REPD renewable energy planning database on Google which are 500 megawatts 800 megawatt projects now connecting at 400 kV.
for small developers anymore. So now this takes us nicely to your day-to-day job in project development. Do you want to tell us what is really project development? What is RTB and NTP and why is there such a gold rush for everyone wanting an RTB solar farm?
Valerio Pelizzi (1:00:18) you
Yeah.
Well, RTB is ready to build, meaning that you have the license to start the construction site, build your site and connect to the grid. NTP is the US version, which means notice to proceed, but it’s basically the same. You can start the construction site, basically.
⁓ There is this rush, especially in the UK, to try to seek RTB projects because of the grid. mean, is constrained, there is no grid available for projects, so people that have grid are golden in their hands now. That’s why everyone is looking after it. clearly, people that have those projects, don’t sell. ⁓
Regarding the bigger project you mentioned, clearly from an engineering perspective is amazing because clearly you have different levels to look after. is a lot of knowledge put in it.
Personally, I don’t think it’s the right answer. As a developer in all the countries, we are working with smaller size. Again, because we really, I really think and the companies I’m working with share the same idea. Distribution is the key word. Again, okay, fine.
800 megawatts solar side great basically we have let’s say zero carbon zero fossil fuel perfect okay those 800 megawatts has to be delivered so you need the grid and you need long lines and stuff it’s not locally utilized and again long lines means losses
because no one has the magic wand to make the grid upgraded instantly, so there will be lot of money lost. Why? Because they want to be a big site. I understand big corporations want to do big sites, or even large developers want to do that, because they have to pay salaries. They need the economy of scale, because basically a big site has much more revenues than a small site, and in some of the workforce you use…
or let’s I’m just exaggerating the concept, but if you’re developing a five megawatt site, you basically spend the same amount of money of one guy over a team of guys developing a 50 megawatt site. But clearly the revenues are different. And if you have like a workforce of X number of people, you need to pay salaries, you need to be profitable and so on. So definitely you don’t want to develop a five megawatt site.
which actually the opposite what I’m looking for because we are trying to keep the team as dynamic as possible and using a network of subcontractors or business partners, I prefer to say because those are business partners, to work together and build up those small sites. For a number of reasons. It’s the…
I can make the parallel of the eternal discussion in the solar industry between string inverters and central inverters. If you lose a string inverter, you lose a small amount of power. If you lose a central inverter, you lose a lot more power. I don’t want to say I prefer string or central because they are own advantage, their pros and cons, but it’s like the same. You are either small scale theme or big scale theme.
I in this one I can choose my part. I will choose small scale because small scale means it’s much easier to deliver locally. If you have like 5-10 megawatts side next to industrial area or a town or wouldn’t say a village, but town or small city, it’s more likely that you deliver your energy there. So it’s very efficient regardless of the grid inefficiency or lines inefficiency.
At the of the day, you don’t lose a lot of money because you deliver locally. And this is to me the most important thing.
The clearly has to be upgraded, that’s for sure, but we can sort of like de-risking the situation. On the opposite, for example, Italy is doing something very good because most of the DNOs and TNOs are allowing you to do the upgrading works, which means you have no delays. ⁓ You can have your connection, you just have to build up primary substation.
Vikram Kumar (1:05:04) Mm.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:05:18) on top of your evacuation line or connecting to the main EHB grid. So you manage, you can control the timing and the construction, you get the works done for the public and get reimbursed by that. It’s not as, you know, as a fairy as it sounds because clearly they don’t give you back the real money but a certain amount of money.
Vikram Kumar (1:05:43) I’m sorry.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:05:46) But again, is more for financial guidance, to balance, know, it’s better to lose some money towards building something for someone else and not get reimbursed or not having the project at all or waiting 10 years for a project. It’s, know, multiple factors are playing. But to me, it’s a good thing that, especially for small scale or medium scale, you have the possibility to do the works so you can control your process and you basically…
getting connected almost immediately.
Vikram Kumar (1:06:16) So from my point of view, everyone’s correct from their own situation. Just like with cable sizing, depending on the laying environment, you have different ⁓ current ratings. In the natural world, we have a different situation in different countries. Like in the UK, we are a cloudy country. We have only capacity factor of 10%.
In America and Italy, you might have in the sunnier parts more than 20 % capacity factor, means you can have twice as much energy for the same solar panel area.
You can have higher density, can have maybe even longer hours in the winter. In the UK, we don’t probably see the sun in the winter at all. And so there so many things coming to my mind. solar and farming is a marriage made in heaven because we understand each other not from our crops and electrons pointing to V, but from the uncertainty. A farmer doesn’t know what kind of yield he has the following year. In solar, we tend to make bubbles. We don’t know if we have a job the following year or not.
something special about you. have to be a little bit crazy, I say, to stay in the industry for as long as we have done. I’m coming up to almost 14 years full-time. You are in the industry probably 15-20 years. To survive this time you have to really have a passion and this passion was clear from your last podcast transcription which I…
went through to prepare for this discussion, which is people in university were laughing that you want to do solar, you want to do the easy stuff. If you want to do the hard stuff, you should be working for the power grid company. But now it’s a reversal of fortunes because there’s $2 trillion US dollars worth of solar installed worldwide. There’s a pipeline of another $75 trillion worth of solar, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:07:50) Thanks.
Vikram Kumar (1:08:09) which is one of the most leading research institutes. Whatever goes on with Trump, the US is still the superpower and they are making these researches and solar is identified as a defense technology. So in this aspect in the UK, maybe we are not as efficient as Italy because we don’t have someone’s son and we have wasted 10 years with Brexit. So now we have to quickly install
50 gigawatts solar before Niger Faraj cancels everything. And so in this aspect it’s quite interesting because he made no secret that he’s a fossil fuel. He thinks this is all green. To quote David Cameron, this is all green, a CRAP. So the point here is going to your RTB point. There’s a desperation for RTB projects because when you’re ready to build projects, everything is already developed.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:08:40) you
Vikram Kumar (1:09:04) Then there’s a game where people look for a bankable EPC to underwrite the credit risk so the lender can provide the money. And now we’ve reached a point where there aren’t many R2B sites. There are maybe even claims because so much is done in the intensive environments. Can you tell our listeners, your customers, partners, contractors, you know, where do you start from a Greenfield project? If you want to really…
generate originate projects what is the first step?
Valerio Pelizzi (1:09:35) Well, the first step is always land. You need to find land. Now, actually, it’s slightly different. Now, what is very important and more than other parts in the world, probably the UK, you need to look at the grid. Because you know where the grid has some capacity, where the grid needs some of the energy. So now, you basically try to look at that.
for the when you start originating a project is you know that certain area of the of the country which has more possibility and you then you go there and check the check the grid and check potential land for ⁓ for starting really the whole process or that there is also the opposite way
you might, something that to be honest I’m trying to do as well where it’s possible ⁓ large energy consumers and having their own ⁓ project, own green energy behind the meter. That is another approach that again depends on the strategy of the company, your strategy or the company you’re working for.
which of the the the path you want to to take on So I would say pretty much this it stayed the same you find the land maybe now land and grid at the same time or grid and land But this is especially in the UK
We do almost the same also in Italy and also in the In the US it’s even more important to be honest because there are lot of like, the grid is sort of like private or mostly private. There are a lot of companies owning part of the grid. So you definitely want to find a primary substation that can give you the more, know, comfortability on building the site near them.
And then you start the whole process you get the land you start in our case doing ugly PV or in my case doing ugly PV you start looking after you start looking at what kind of crops are growing there and if it’s feasible making an ugly PV or Building in what way and then you run financials and then it’s everything is in their place You start the proper process so you apply for the grid you got the grid connection
You do all the studies for environmental studies on the pre-application phase for the planning permission. You do the planning permission. You get hopefully the planning permission and then you start your RTP status. You either plan for the construction site or you sell the project to someone that wants to do. What I see now, to be honest, is a ⁓ shift in
the in the economy in the economics of the of the renewable energies market meaning they were especially before they were everyone was doing their bit there were you know funds they were buying sites epsis they were building for funds developer were developing and selling now is more is more fluid i would say margins are tighter because there are no more incentives
still if you design, you in a proper project, is still very one of the only assets that are profitable, because meaning that you earn money or running the assets till the end. But I mean clearly the margins are tighter, so there is more like of, and also the education is higher to…
all the players in the industry are much more educated than before, everyone wants to build up sort of partnership. there are developers that are no longer independent, there are developers that are finding agreement of co-development with funds or with the EPCs, or EPCs that have their own development department in-house, so they start developing and then building their own sites, maybe selling a…
either a RTB or a construction site, whatever they see fit. So it’s more fluid. I wouldn’t say that all the fans are buying RTB and that they build through VPCs. There are still some, know, someone is doing something, someone else is doing differently. It’s more like it’s maturing in the market. So there is no longer one way to do stuff, but there is multiple ways, depending again.
a new strategy and how do you want to go ahead with
Vikram Kumar (1:14:34) And so staying with this theme about ⁓ avoiding cowboy behaviors, you know, it’s an interesting topic now because, you know, there’s there’s an illusion or a mirage like on the desert, you want water, you start to imagine this, that there is water and then you arrive and there’s nothing you’re just hallucinating in your mind. And this hallucination can be driven by greed or driven by quick wins. If you want to be tricked by a scammer, go for the quick win. This is the far
way to lose all your money in one or two nights. And so this is the misnomer now, or the illusion rather, because people calculate the economics of energy and they see there’s two trillion dollars of solar installed worldwide. there’s another 75 trillion dollars in the pipeline and that’s just the the capex of owning the asset. The energy revenue is even more than this. So this kind of greed can be self-fulfilling. It feeds a cycle, it creates a bubble.
where the developer has no responsibility for the asset performance. If you have an investor, they don’t want any risk because they’re a big company. Who’s going to lose their job taking a gamble? They have a nice salary already, nice expense account. You’re going to do something that’s going to get you fired. You’re not. So there’s a natural feedback loop where you want to farm out the risk. This is the reason why the DNO or the power utility companies, the railway people want to work in solar because they see us do the real stuff.
and
they are stuck behind so many procedures where they never get near a high voltage substation until the end of their career, by this time they too tired. the point is now you have a situation where the big projects in the UK, are funded against the EPC’s, Engineering Procurement Contractors’ balance sheet, because against their EPC bonds or credit limits, have the bank, Lloyd’s Bank and others are giving the CAPEX. And the big CAPEX makes people chase the easy stuff.
Easy stuff is you have 50 pence per watt or whatever construction cost. can calculate this very easy, half a million per megawatt. Everybody wants to have this, but when you have a margin of only 10%, this is not enough to break even because you make one mistake, one design miscalculation. You are bankrupt on that project already.
because the bank will come after you when it’s not performing. The company that’s taking the PPAs or the energy will come after you.
The EPCs are learning now. You need to start developing your own sites. Otherwise, you have an incentive not to build a good solar farm because the employer’s requirements are not even controlled by you. It’s controlled by maybe a developer that will not hold the asset. And so in this sense, who pays for the studies? Who pays to find the land? Who pays to find the grid? Who pays to do the earthing assessments?
Valerio Pelizzi (1:17:26) This is a very good point that actually I like a lot. I really, I really see the point in this kind of build because this is the way the market can kick out the cowboys.
At the end of the day, all the costs are on the owner’s shoulders. Regardless if it’s person, family office, or infrastructure fund, whatever it is, it’s on their balance sheet. That’s why they are getting more more educated, and that’s why the people working properly with a very good standard and quality are…
you know, I keep working. There are some people that think when there is consolidation it’s not good for the market. The monopoly is not good for the market. But consolidation, it is good. Because there are, at least to me, meaning that if you are a good developer, whatever is developer of good PC,
It means that you will keep working because the funds, clearly they want to maximize the profits and to maximize the profits they have to have the best developer possible is the one that makes the less mistakes and makes you decide more efficient possible. You want the best EPC because the best EPC will build with quality your assets. You don’t need to do correct maintenance or spend a lot of money correcting mistakes of someone else.
So consolidation in a way, it is good because even if the margins are, let’s say less for people, but ⁓ as a whole industry is still good. again, it’s down to every single entity to negotiate their own ⁓ fair ⁓ profit. It’s no longer a time where I always, no, I wouldn’t say that, but there were a few entities that
they were working as a the strategy was take the money and run. Exactly as you were saying earlier. Let’s try to make the easy way. Let’s try to do the stuff quickly and try to sell as soon as we can and just run. No responsibility, no everything. And I really want to say who is going to pay for the mistakes. That’s why I really love co-development or having educated
owners involved since the beginning because it’s like a shared vision, shared strategy, a shared discussion. know, where everything is part of the equation to build up a good project. I’ve never been like a developer even in my early days where I don’t care about performances. I’m selling for each megawatt peak installed, so I would just panel everything.
Vikram Kumar (1:20:18) Mm-hmm.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:20:27) What is the performance? don’t know, 60%. I don’t care. I will find someone to sell it. And early days, that no one was really the fans, the owners were not educated. The TAs were not educated as well because it was a learning process for everyone. in the early days, there were a lot of cowboys that really, they make good money.
Vikram Kumar (1:20:27) you
Yes, or someone to guarantee the performance.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:20:58) good money in a sense, a lot of money, not good because basically they were sort of like cheating or, you know, really selling something that it was not supposed to be. Let’s put it this way.
Vikram Kumar (1:21:12) from my point of view I studied law for five years and I didn’t become a lawyer because I hate litigation I hate fighting you know when something’s not working there’s a divorce there’s a claim nobody wins from that because as human beings are very good at arguments for your what 10,000 words I have a hundred thousand replies and this is a never-ending process once the project’s already stranded you know it’s just gonna be a war between the parties and everyone is up
Valerio Pelizzi (1:21:34) Thank
Vikram Kumar (1:21:42) in the end walking with no friends you know when I was saying who pays I meant who pays for the development in the early stage
who pays for the estate agents that go out and find land, who pays for the grid finder, who pays for engineers like you to do the studies, to build a relationship with the farmer, to build the PPA agreements. At what point do people start paying for development instead of chasing ready to build or RTB project which are not existing anymore?
Valerio Pelizzi (1:22:14) Well, is the developer paid for the initial costs? I mean, you have to invest something. either it’s your work, either it’s your time, you have to invest. You have to build up those relationships with landowners, with farmers. You have to find land. You have to go around. So you invest your time, really. So let’s say you spend, I don’t know, 10, 15 working days doing those stuff.
Vikram Kumar (1:22:29) Mm-hmm.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:22:40) So pay nothing, clearly, because you will get the end game when you set up your project. This is a good point, again, because ⁓ working in this kind of environment means that you have to be good. You don’t want to waste time in projects that are not going to go ahead somehow. And it is good also, you can maybe share some risk with… ⁓
Vikram Kumar (1:23:00) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:23:07) with the owners at the end because they want to enter at the beginning because clearly the money is where the risk is. It’s clear to everyone. So if you are a developer, you take 100 % risk, it means that when your project is totally risked, you get a lot of money. But it’s a bet. You should manage your mortality rate of the project. If you are a fan, you want the same, but if you…
I a big balance sheet I can take home this risk for x amount of money so developer you are good I want you to work with your mind free you don’t have to worry about risks I’ll get all the risk on but I’ll pay you this amount of money much less which is fair I mean it’s your decision you want to either bet on your skills or you want to
you know, just work and having the risk on someone else’s shoulders. It’s fine. It’s a part of the market. So you decide wherever you want to be. If you want to be independent, you pay either in time or even money at the beginning to get rewarded at the end. Or you find an agreement like a co-development with funds. So I am good in developing. You don’t have expertise or people enough to do those kinds of stuff. I’ll do it for you as a…
Vikram Kumar (1:24:15) Okay.
Thank
Valerio Pelizzi (1:24:36) sort of like business partner. Even if I keep seeing now, not keep seeing, but I saw a few sort of like technical consultants. they own, the ⁓ owners owning the assets from scratch and you just develop for them as an external consultant. So basically not owning anything really, zero risks, but the project already in the end.
is more often you see agreements where you are a sort of business partner with your final exit owner, so you have some shares on it.
Vikram Kumar (1:25:17) Fantastic and you know.
Not everyone is a cowboy. Sometimes people are natural animal instincts. They chase where is the low hanging fruit. One of the things that can distort the market is subsidies because it was essential to start the industry. As you said, also for the Italian market, but it was the same in the UK market, is the subsidies were designed for 4 kilowatt or 2 kilowatt or 3 kilowatt solar systems, not 50 megawatt projects. And the subsidies were far too generous.
and this creates a gold rush for the subsidies. Subsidies are cut and then the market is bankrupt and then it creates a gold rush to export as much as possible to the grid and then you have negative prices and then you have again stranded projects from the developers and now these developers are desperate to find an EPC and we are quite lucky in our networking group in our regular meetups in London, in Solar and Storage and into Solar Munich that we have some of the three of the top EPCs in our group.
you one of these guys you know even though they work at tough conditions is mr frederick sterling young young chap you know they are really learning through fire you know there’s the the the the sharpest swords of force in fire and ⁓ you know frederick was teaching me in birmingham solar show if you have five megawatts ⁓ times about thousands five thousand kilowatts ⁓ or five million kilowatt hours per year you generate and you can calculate quickly
What is going to be your revenue streams? So?
If you take the longer approach, which is develop really a CNI project and use the energy locally, you can have 7 pence per kilowatt hour, can have energy revenues of 7 million over 20 years, or if you’re selling to EV charging, some people are charging 89 pence per kilowatt hour. For only 5 megawatts, you can have 89 million revenue over 20 years, 89 million pounds for a 5 megawatt site.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:27:18) Yeah, it
won’t be fair to be honest to me. But still…
Vikram Kumar (1:27:21) It won’t be fair but this is the
re-
This is the reality in the market because the grid is limited in capacity. So if you want to be green and you’re a driver EV car and then you don’t have the range to get home from Birmingham, you have to pay whatever the service charges charging you. So in terms of the revenue stream, now we are in a situation in German market and some others where you’ve got negative energy pricing. So people are looking at repowering all sites, but this repowering is also being driven by greed because
Why do they want to repower old sites and not build new ones? Because the old sites are still with subsidies. So we are really chasing subsidies and this creates a bubble. know, it’s almost like a artificial drug. You have a high because you have a subsidies and then you have a crash because you can’t find the subsidies anymore. That’s not sustainable long term. Subsidies are there to make a stable market, not to create a boom and bust every two or three years. So from your perspective, what’s your thoughts?
Valerio Pelizzi (1:28:11) Yeah.
May I disagree
with you? May I disagree with you on this one? You get a very good point. You need subsidies to start the industry. Because you need to create demand. Because when there is no demand, the price is high. Clearly. It’s the simplest rule of economics. It’s still dragging a little bit, but it’s no longer the time where you need subsidies.
Vikram Kumar (1:28:23) Yes, of course.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:28:48) because any renewable energy assets, even the average one, not the best performing, are still super profitable. If you consider now, we know that systems can last 30 years at least, 30-35 years, even if you have, I don’t know, 20 years payback time, which I think is like probably, I don’t know, 3, 4 % IRR, something like that. Meaning that…
Vikram Kumar (1:29:05) Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
you
Valerio Pelizzi (1:29:18) in the whole
scenario means that for 20 years you don’t get any money, you just pay back your investment, but still you have another 15 years which is pure revenue. This is not happening for any… When you say you cannot stay on subsidies forever, this is only true for renewables, but not because you cannot sustain it, but because you don’t need them. On the opposite I would say…
Vikram Kumar (1:29:23) Yeah. Yeah.
Yes. Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:29:45) You can stay on subsidies forever because fossil fuels are running on subsidies. They are totally anti-economic. But energy is a primary need now for people. So any country has to guarantee energy to people. And the only way they can keep open, know, carbon, carbon, well, no longer in the UK, but…
Vikram Kumar (1:29:49) Yes, Yeah.
Yes. Yes.
Yes.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:30:13) let’s say, ⁓ fossil fuel plant, they need to pay them because on the op, on the contrary, they cannot run the plant. the short, long story short, you answer, you know, cannot sustain forever incentives subsidies. No, you have to in a way. The good is you can now save a lot of money renewables integrating into the existing ⁓
generation profile because there are assets that don’t need money to be profitable and to run.
That is the really, and again, I’m pretty sure at least 90 % of the people not working in our industry will tell you that their fossil fuels are perfect because they don’t need subsidies to run. I think this is the perception outside our industry. No one knows that the only assets that don’t need subsidies are the renewable ones.
Vikram Kumar (1:31:17) Fossil fuels are subsidized, nuclear is even more subsidized probably and delivered always ten years late. the point is, wealth gained unjustly is lost quickly. And energy is so extremely valuable for every economy in the world that if the market design is not correct, it creates sharks and it creates wolves. People grow dependency
on the subsidies you give them, it fossil, whether it is nuclear, whether it is solar, and if that dependency is not appropriate,
You never get in a market where you’re dealing with Orm’s law and energy efficiency and all of that. You’re chasing only subsidies. And of course, this makes the older sites very valuable because they’ve got inflation linked subsidies and they are less than the fossil fuel subsidies. But that same thing repeats the oil and gas mistakes, you know, because we chasing the subsidies. When the subsidy is not there anymore, people are laying off 300 people. Why do need an EPC when you have no project anymore? ⁓
project, need 300 people because you have too much work to do. Now you go back to the Second World War, you know, why we are in this situation is the war moved to the Middle East because of oil and gas. Even today we have the same geopolitics with the Strait of Hormuz, which gives a lot of leverage because if Iran is blocking the Strait of Hormuz, you stop all the oil and gas, all your panels cannot arrive because they’re coming on fossil fuels.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:32:48) Yeah, yeah, that’s true. I can’t really…
Vikram Kumar (1:32:53) The I want to ask you
is about the negative energy pricing. Germany has done huge projects, the US as well. Everyone is doing the same thing. Everyone is sending solar in the daytime. Now people have negative energy hours. There is going to be a very senior CTO who will write a Forbes magazine article about this soon. They are documenting a PV magazine negative number of hours, hours where you are paying to export your energy.
So what is your way out of this?
Valerio Pelizzi (1:33:26) Yeah, that…
Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Vikram Kumar (1:33:30) What is your way out of the negative energy pricing in Central Europe? How did you come out of this situation?
Valerio Pelizzi (1:33:37) Just studying the grid itself, mean, point is you need to have a broader view on the industry itself. It’s not like I need to build, so I sell, so I make money and that’s it. No, it’s not working like that. You have to adapt.
always, it’s changing, all the markets are changing, not only our industry, has been always, historically, in any ⁓ market. So what does it now? You need, when the energy is most used, know, peak time, early morning, and late afternoon, night. So you have to shift your energy. You have an asset that is performing
you know, on a, ⁓ the, sorry, you have a solar asset is not performing the famous duck curve where you have those peaks, you know, early morning and late afternoon, you have to shift and to adapt to that curve. What does it mean? It means that you, for example, restore storage.
Storage in form of batteries storage in form of hydrogen Whatever it is. You need to sell your energy or use your energy differently So you need to you know to learn new stuff Yeah, it’s it’s always like that talking about fossil fuels, you know the first cars ⁓ You know not talking about the EV ones, but the the first cars were running with a liter of petrol. I don’t know
six, seven, eight kilometers, maybe less. Now there are like 15, 20. The technology has advanced because it was not longer sustainable in that way. Then they make the diesel engine to have more range, less consumption. Again, it’s everything evolving. if now you have too much energy during daytime, either you decide, I don’t care.
the amount of energy I sell is still profitable to me so I keep doing like that, I don’t do anything or you try to find a solution. You cannot be stuck in one model. If the model doesn’t work anymore, you have to think, even think outside of the box. Clear the easiest things, especially with the pricing going ⁓ down like ⁓ a waterfall ⁓ for storage, you have storage.
Vikram Kumar (1:35:56) .
Valerio Pelizzi (1:36:09) meaning your generation is going into batteries during the day when the price is negative and you just release when it’s needed and this is also a good thing because it means that if you make your renewable energy assets more reliable, more time shifting, it means that you need less base generation from fossil fuels and actually you also have
no longer well again exaggerating and thinking out loud you have you will have no longer negative pricing because the negative pricing just because you have too much energy for what is needed if you just give them the energy they need they will have still a price it will be a low one but still positive so we let’s say in the
the balance will be in a position where most of the energy you generate will be into storage to be used later on for whatever reason, selling, balancing, regulation, whatever it is, but it will be the majority of your generation will be stored and part of your generation will be sold directly. This is what I see the balance.
Vikram Kumar (1:37:24) Mm-hmm.
So addressing.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:37:32) And the only
way to avoid negative pricing really.
Vikram Kumar (1:37:34) So addressing this from a cable point of view, a lot of the power utility people that say solar was the easy stuff and they missed on the first few booms in solar, these same guys and girls or ladies or whatever, they see now what happens. They see that the energy price is not relative to the generation capacity but the ability to move the energy around, having energy at the right place at the right time.
If we electrify everything in the UK that can be electrified, we reduce energy from 1,644 terawatt hours to 500 terawatt hours, but then this is more than doubling the electrical demand. And the grid, you cannot dig up every single road in England because people will be upset with you about that. And so now to deal with these issues and with negative energy pricing, there is a grid reality. There are funds called grid out there now. So these same high-voltage engineers now are leaving to join the battery storage companies.
companies because they can see there’s a gold rush now for battery development. There’s more than 100 gigawatt hours of batteries in the pipeline on the RAPD database, 30 gigawatts of solar, gigawatt peak of solar, and they have a lot of work to do. Many people are burnt out by the time the contract signature happens for RTB assets or notice to proceed or whatever and you get your funding and your milestone payments. And when they go to procure, they don’t realize and some people are very naive.
that high voltage industry is also a defense kind of technology. There’s a reason why Putin is bombing substations in Ukraine. bomb a high voltage substation, you take our whole city of power, you can disable the trains. There are real defense aspects to high voltage. People don’t realize when they sign the contract, they are told your transformers, your high voltage cable, even one connector for 132KV can be on two-year lead times.
And you can only use very specific things because why would National Grid take the risk of putting random things on the high voltage network? Because your project will never be more important.
than the whole national grid. You cannot knock out an entire airport or a railway because somebody wants to connect some batteries. So your development ideas now, do you consider co-location with batteries? And second point as we come towards the end, I want to push towards is the CNI, the commercial and industrial market. Because if you ask me now, what is my forecast for the next five years, I would say the small developers
will be kicked out of high voltage projects because it’s becoming a big game. You have to have alliances with the big partners that have the deep pockets.
And so they will find the projects are stranded because they cannot access the grid. The grid’s gone. National Grid is under pressure to kick our projects, which are not showing mass and progress. So I believe CNI will see a return. So from your point of view, the first question, do you co-locate batteries with every development? And the second question, what percentage of your time will you spend in the smaller commercial and industrial projects, where you will not need to worry about the
it.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:40:54) Okay, well, the first answer to your question is yes. Co-location is going to become more and more important over the next years. Just only for one reason. It’s not only a financial reason, but it’s also a matter of taking out pressure from the grid.
At the end of the day it means that you can manage the grid so it will be less strained and it can first of all work better and you need even less works. At the end of the day if you need to build up 100 megawatts instead of like 50 your grid has to support massive works to do upgrades.
So that’s why colocation can help out because you will again, instead of having like big peaks and very low ⁓ injection, you will have more stable curve. So you can manage better. It’s not only having a, ⁓ let’s say a better curve of your generation, your generation profile, but it’s a matter of giving energy when it’s needed. That is very important.
And to be honest, it came back to my earlier point, being more distributed the better. And answering to small developers kicked out of the HP, it’s fine. Everyone has to do what they excel at. Small developers can work on what they do best. So developing assets, leaving
the management of the grid itself, and people that have experience and knowledge about that. And this is actually something that is not really clear, or at least not to everyone, because you correctly said everyone now need to jump on the HV because the MV is totally overwhelmed. There is nothing there. No, the answer is no. You cannot go there if you don’t know how it works, unless you are the right business partners.
I’m happy that the people that pretend to be knowledgeable about HP are kicked out. It has to be that. You either, you really are or you don’t. If you are not, go out. It’s not your business. I’m fine with that. Regarding CNI, CNI can play a massive role in the overall industry. And I don’t think everyone really, really…
understood that very well. CNI can take out a lot of pressure from grid. There are a lot of factories and labs and so on that works only during the day or mostly during the day. They are buying energy. If they can have behind the meter installation or super local generation plans,
it means that there no weight on the grid itself. And again, grid with less weight on it will work much better, it’s much easier to manage power, and you need not to be worried too much about how many generations you need to put on to keep up with the demand. And this is again, it’s something including myself, I I’m not really doing CNI or…
a small part of my time now ⁓ because I don’t have too much experience or knowledge yet to be only on CNI. But CNI is a market that is really interesting, not as business itself, but as a balance of the overall system, electrical system. Because consider all the warehouses doing, consider if they are cut out from the grid.
in terms of energy, no real cut out. You are probably, I don’t 40 % less of the demand of the UK, maybe? I don’t know, I’m just shooting numbers, random numbers, I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure that all the industries in this country are consuming a large part of the energy. If you consider that chunk out of the grid, because either they’re behind the meter installation,
Vikram Kumar (1:45:22) Mm-hmm.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:45:26) or a local ⁓ generation product can use basically without use of the grid, it be a massive release of pressure, massive release of problems on the grid for everyone.
Vikram Kumar (1:45:33) Mm-hmm.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:45:39) I you’re on mute, Vic.
Vikram Kumar (1:45:41) Sorry about that. What I see on the Office of National Statistics is that ⁓ the biggest energy use is in fact generating electricity generally for the whole country. It’s split into all different applications. We have also domestic space heating requirements, which is the second biggest energy use. And then you have aircraft and shipping.
and water heating and then you’ve got the transport fossil fuels for the transport for cars and trucks which is why electrification ⁓ of vehicles is so controversial because it has an economic impact. Industries depend on the country like China will have massive industrial use in the UK. Our industrial use is strategic. We need the steel plants for the railways, for defence, for shipbuilding and here you have ⁓ an important point where the energy
volume is not as important as the security. you are integrating energy, know, we make cables in many factories. If you’re integrating ⁓ embedded generation like solar or batteries or whatever kind of facility inside a factory, you’re affecting more than just the solar. If something goes wrong and the whole production is affected, you can have an issue in the factory. And so this requires a lot of electrical
engineering know-how to do the load flow, do the power analysis, to upgrade the circuit breakers so they can handle the additional…
demands if you’re putting 800 amp circuits on a switchboard and you need to be able to run the analysis, you need to do the power factor corrections, all of these things are affecting the plant, the airport, the railway, even the EV chargers. So here again someone has to pay for that development so that when you put solar in a factory you don’t find that you have poor energy efficiency. If your power factor is not adjusted properly you can lose 30 % in poor power factor correction that the inverters have to comply to G19.
or G100 or whatever, even if they’re not importing they’re still grid connected, you’re not always 100 % off grid. because a lot of the big corporates want to do embedded generation, when they go into the actual details they realize, oh wow, it’s complicated, I can affect how the airport’s running, maybe I should just go to Shell or Stackcraft or anyone or EDF and I should just do a PPA agreement, power purchase agreement.
it’s easier for them this way. You TFL has signed with Longfield Solar Farm, which is not even constructed yet, a PPA which is on the public record. So from this point of view…
you have to convince the corporate company and they have to be credit worthy because if you’re giving them a PPA loan they have to be able to pay the energy bills for a fixed period of time. do you have intentions to go to such heavy energy users to convince them to make their own energy instead of buying PPAs in the open market?
Valerio Pelizzi (1:48:46) It can be either way. Again, it’s just a matter of where the risks lie at the end. If you want to, if the big companies doesn’t want to have risks of generation 1 of PPA, you can give them a PPA. Then the risk will be on you. If you have enough financial records and track to be bankable at the end of the day, you can do that.
Vikram Kumar (1:49:06) you
Valerio Pelizzi (1:49:14) But I mean, the best assets to me is not about, it’s not financial, it’s technical. You know how to be reliable in the energy. You can be unlucky and having failures and stuff, but…
This can happen, but it cannot keep happening. If you develop a good project properly, you are not going to be affected. Even if you are the luckiest person in this world, you have few failures, those will be few failures. If you keep having failures and you have problems in delivering, it’s not a problem of being bankable or not if you have the economic power. It means that you…
Vikram Kumar (1:49:35) Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:49:59) you are not skilled enough to deliver a good project. So to me the best asset is still your knowledge. If you’re able to deliver a good project, doesn’t matter if you, you shouldn’t be worried about liquidated damages or pain for the missing energy delivered because you’re not going to face it. ⁓ again, everything can happen, you know, but…
Vikram Kumar (1:50:02) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:50:25) You cannot assume there would be a crazy guy that put fire on your system and it burned everything. Clearly it’s a risk, but it’s not really, you cannot plan on the other one. is a how is likely to happen.
Vikram Kumar (1:50:45) Well, we have real
clear examples. If you EPC a solar farm or battery project and you build up the capability like you have done at Canadian Solar and other places in the past, you learn through fire. You have learned through negotiations. You’re constantly fighting the employer’s requirements or what the client wants. And so you’re learning constantly. But once you’ve built the project and you go into O in a few years past and you demobilize, you lose your industrial capability.
because you don’t need it. You don’t need huge delivery teams and teams of engineers running analyses. You don’t have 100 contractors on your project. So to give you an idea, like I said, our primary energy demand is 1,644 terawatt hours. And put this into context, the whole London Underground is 1.2 terawatt hours. And then drilling further down, Heathrow Airport probably uses less energy for electricity than the London Underground. But I visited the Heathrow Energy category manager, buyer for the energy
for lockdown and he told me he’s spending 90 million pounds per year on electricity in Heathrow. Heathrow is a big microgrid and but what they’re using is peanuts and that’s before the energy prices were doubling and so for these guys they have a desire to do their own generation but if there’s a lot of complications because you’re affecting the airport operations and
Valerio Pelizzi (1:51:54) Yeah.
Yeah.
Vikram Kumar (1:52:11) There is a lot of risk that has to be managed, at the same time, we have now legal obligations to report our CO2 emissions, and so they have a pressure. If they want to build the runway, they have to start doing EV charging, have to do solar. But I won’t go too far into that. think we have covered a lot. Do you want to close by summarizing your next steps and your travel plan for…
Valerio Pelizzi (1:52:23) Yeah.
Yeah.
Vikram Kumar (1:52:38) for solar and storage and are you going to be in to solar this year or next year as well?
Valerio Pelizzi (1:52:45) Yeah, I will definitely be in Intersolar next year. We really didn’t realize that it take two hours now. I’m not sure, hopefully it’s not that boring to all the people. anyway, I will keep doing what I now think is something that I like a lot and I will focus on AgriPV globally.
Vikram Kumar (1:52:54) Yes, exactly.
Mm-hmm.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:53:14) to be in the development and be in this part of the industry for a lot of years. ⁓ So that’s where I’m heading in the next future.
Vikram Kumar (1:53:26) Fantastic.
And in 2026, which countries do you expect to spend most of your time?
Valerio Pelizzi (1:53:32) Yeah, still yeah you This is a good question. I would say probably split into three between Well, no, let’s say most of the time between UK and Italy and a growing part compared to this year in the US
Vikram Kumar (1:53:51) ⁓ So, Valeri, thanks very much for your time today. I think you’re right, we’re talking close to two hours. So, I would love to listen again to our podcast, you know, look at the transcripts which I will send to you. if there’s anything about sour grapes you want to remove, you have…
Valerio Pelizzi (1:54:04) Yeah.
I didn’t say anything so it’s up to you really.
You told that, I never did so I’m happy with everything.
Vikram Kumar (1:54:15) You have to have fun.
Life is short if you don’t make a few jokes. Thank you very much for joining us today. I will reflect back on what you’ve said and we will follow up offline in our networking events as well. Any last words to your listeners before we hang up?
Valerio Pelizzi (1:54:21) Yeah.
Well, thank you very much to you, Vikram. And you are the humblest person in our group because you put together really a very high quality product because this podcast, you know…
except when I talk about myself but all the other professionals have been talking to you very very knowledgeable, very long experience in the industry and they are always giving you a lot of ⁓ points to think about and to know to really reflect on your daily job and I hope not to bore too many people this time and
it would be great replicating this access of the previous one.
Vikram Kumar (1:55:18) I think generally people like to listen to you because you’re bringing a wealth of knowledge, especially when so many youngsters are entering the market, they worked in isolation. They should be working with people like you to benefit from the experience so they don’t repeat the mistakes that we made. And we have generally a very great group of people and many of them are coming because we have you joining our events so they want to learn from you. So thank you very much for joining us today.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:55:44) Thank you very much for inviting me again. be my pleasure.
Vikram Kumar (1:55:48) You’re welcome. Thank you.
Vikram Kumar (00:01.774) Welcome to the future of solar photovoltaics. We are on our 15th guest now. I’ve got the absolute pleasure of welcoming Mr Nick Spicer from Your Eco Nick, welcome. Hey, how are we doing? You’re right. Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. I’m very excited to be here. Our podcast is a voluntary run initiative to bring some ethics back into the industry.
It’s been listened to in over 87 countries, over 700 cities. We are predominantly a business-orientated podcast focusing on the large-scale solar business, usually above, say, 100 kilowatts. And so it’s very nice to have you here because we try to restore credibility back into the industry. You’ll start by introducing yourself, mentioning a bit about your early life and background. Yeah, of course. Well, look, it’s great to hear, and I think it’s really important.
part of the industry is that credibility and the ethics and everything around it. So great to hear what you’re doing and thank you for having me. As I said, in terms of myself, I’m Nick Spicer. I’m the CEO of Your Eco In terms of early life, I grew up in Buckinghamshire, just outside of London. Off to university at Leeds, focused on human geography with a bit of a focus on sustainability there and always a real passion of mine before spending my time as an army officer.
went to Sandhurst the Royal Military Academy there and I spent my time as an infantry officer in the Yorkshire Regiment, commanded the Longhost combat unit out in Baghdad and I had a wonderful time in the military before I decided that it was time to perhaps stop getting shot at for a vocation and a career and move into the sustainability world. Interesting that you say Buckinghamshire because I spent the last four years coaching in Buckinghamshire.
Wycombe and Bucks Football League for the Ruislip Rangers? well, I know it well. So I went to school at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe and grew up just in the village outside of there. So a great part of the world but my sort of life from there took me up to the University of Leeds and then back into London as so often is the case and then the military sort of brought us out to the south west out towards Warminster and then we settled and raised our family out here in Bath.
Vikram Kumar (02:22.009) Fantastic. In terms of hobbies and interests? Well, you mentioned football. Football is a big hobby of mine. Hobbies slash, we’ll call it, bordering on dangerous addiction. I coach girls youth football and have done for many years at Bath City Football Club. But also, dare I say, for all my sins, all my pain, I like to think of it as escapism, but I don’t know sometimes. It’s like going to a torture chamber. I’m a big Arsenal fan.
and season ticket holder up there, so I do spend quite a bit of unhealthy time to and from Bath up to London and the Emirates watching the football. But I’m also a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, and some great interest in geography and exploration and environmental issues. And I also have a penchant, I guess, for doing sometimes the weird and wonderful. So I try and do something every year that puts me outside my comfort zone. The other year I decided to take part in the world’s longest
canoe race where I paddled a thousand miles with my best buddy Dan up the Yukon River up to the Arctic Circle on a 10 days, thousand mile self-supported expedition. I’ve run across the Sahara, I’ve swam from Europe to Asia, I’ve done all kinds of weird and wonderful silly things over the years so hopefully that gives you a bit of an insight into me. It certainly does, there’s a lot to talk about. I’ve got a in Afghanistan and know, family.
So it’s something we pick up offline. In terms of education background, can you tell us a bit more? You mentioned the Army already. Yeah, so I went to school at the Royal Grammar School, as I said. Went to University of Leeds to study human geography, but also leaning on the sustainability front. Moved across to the military from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, as I said. Served best part of eight years in the infantry on that side.
before moving across to Your Eco I found myself in the renewable energy industry in about 2011, and the hiatus of the solar coaster and all that brought with it. And then I founded Eurico in 2016 with my wife Amanda. And we are here today almost a decade into the journey. And I think one of the key things for us really is bringing that military background that provides that sort of discipline, precise project management approach that we’d like to hope we’re known for at Your Eco
Vikram Kumar (04:42.959) That’s sort of aerospace, military grade quality and everything we do. But it’s really trying to be a business with purpose as well, which is very much at the fore of who we are and what we seek to do. Fantastic. The aerospace stuff is interesting. We could talk about that offline. do a bit of work in Switzerland, so we’re quite big into aircraft carriers and other similar things. And, know, Dean came in for airports and so on, which is how I go into solar, but this is about you.
You started Your Eco in 2016, which is a controversial year because I think was the year of the Brexit referendum. I was into solar, I took it as a bit of a joke and then we took it seriously and I think we’re just about recovering from that hangover. But before starting your company, what did you do in solar from 2011 to 2016? Yeah, I got headhunted to come work for a company who delivering large-scale volume programme rollouts of solar PV, predominantly around the residential side. So I got involved in that early days from a project management and operation.
management perspective helping them scale a business before deciding that I thought there was a way I might be able to do it myself in a way more aligned to my own thinking and what I sort of you know probably have best practice to deliver solar. And what made you want to start your own business? I have always I suppose been a little bit mercurial in my ways and like to
think outside the box and think how I might do things. And probably I also realised that, as my wife Amanda would say, I couldn’t work for anyone else. I think I went for an early interview with Shell after leaving the military and certainly wasn’t for me, both the business and the organisation. But, you know, that PLC environment, I don’t think would suit me. And I’m very much more geared, I guess, to a more entrepreneurial mindset. So that was very much the focus and really having, you know, the ability to create one’s own
future and forge one’s own path was an attractive one. But also the ability that I wanted to create a positive legacy for this generation, the next and still do and it’s very much part of how we see business and the purpose behind it. And it’s something that I have strong feelings towards with the young family, two young daughters, Ella and Mila, and very much want to know that when asked by them or maybe grandchildren years to come, what did you do about this? I say, well, at least I tried. I stood up.
Vikram Kumar (07:07.918) was counted for. So that was why I really wanted to set up the business and why I wanted to you know do so to create something of my own and yeah as I said probably not have a boss. Although I do have a boss now I report directly to my wife Amanda who seemingly now runs the business but now it’s a great place to be so I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve been on the road for a very long time in different capacities and sales and procurement and engineering building sites as well. Some people never
Did start your own business? Did you talk to your wife about going at it alone? Yea, we did. One of the people I look up to a lot, though, is, and there’s probably a story in this later down the line is Richard Branson. I think of his books is screw it, just do it. I am sure that was the title of his book and it really sort of inspired me on that entrepreneurial side. Just to say, dare I say, you know.. you know, what’s the worst that could happen? But also, you know, I do think, like you, so many
people don’t do it because they look at the risks and say well actually this could happen or this could happen but you know flip that narrative upside down and I’m probably in the main quite a glass half full and actually is probably often positively overflowing that glass with with my own views on things you know actually what’s the best that could happen and there’s a lot of good things that can happen so it’s sometimes it’s well they say the juice is worth its grace
How did you get into Solar? got head hunted to come help, as I said, a company I was worked before heads hunted me to come in. They were seeking someone from an ex military background to corral multiple teams, multiple fronts delivering large scale programmes. So I’m sure for all of us who remember the early days of solar feeding tariff-based programmes, they still give a sleepless night and some twitches that we want to forget about. But, you know, yeah, that’s how I got into it, really.
great and it was a great transition coming into solar and being able to now scale a business focused on PV and storage for our more corporate C &I clients. And I think that military experience in the challenging environments naturally translates to deploying renewable energy in remote locations as we have as part of our business, especially in the early days where we were doing an awful lot of that. And actually was probably one of the key elements of the business that differentiated ourselves was working in more remote and extreme environments.
Vikram Kumar (09:34.031) often post-conflict or disaster. mean, for instance, after the Nepal earthquake, I found myself a year later taking Prince Harry out to install solar with me for a week as part of an ex-military disaster relief organisation I was leading and involved with at the time and leading one of their teams. And so I spent quite a lot of time in Nepal delivering solar next to the epicentre of the earthquake and also restoring a hydro turbine in one of the key villages and valleys that had been affected as a direct result.
Fantastic, there’s a Dutch chap on a podcast with us earlier, name is Mr Arnoud Klaren he lives in Malaga in Spain now. used be the technical director of Foresight. He got into solar by going to Nepal as well, developing solar cells where they usually concentrate sunlight and all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff. But this is about you, as we said earlier, introducing your business. Do you want to tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, so Your Eco is a multi-award winning B Corp certified solar energy company. We specialize in solar.
PV and battery storage systems. The company we’ve got a head office in Bath, a main operational office in Bristol and satellite offices in London and Cornwall and we operate with a mission of working with you towards an energy independent low carbon future and our mantra is very much focused around people, planet, profit. As I said we’re also a carbon-nutrient business and we have our own philanthropic arm, Reduce Our Carbon, which we support to make sure that you know we’re involved in agroforestry.
schemes and smokeless stoves, which is how we take that carbon neutral position ourselves. And we really just wanted to be a business with purpose that do things correctly. I think, you know, since we’ve continued, we’ve wanted to take much more of position of advocacy in the market. And I link back to your earlier comments talking about ethics and really being at the fore of things. I think my view I always say to people is, and I say this to clients a lot, is I recognise as a business that we can’t do every solar project and nor do we want to do every
project and some projects aren’t for us and some projects aren’t for other people. I said but what’s really important to me is that trying to be a voice hopefully of advocacy and try and communicate some of the key concepts that we need to be talking about so clients can make informed decisions. I am mindful that the industry has had low barriers to entry and it has had dare I say some of the charlatans of the world in it in the early days, maybe there’s still elements of it.
Vikram Kumar (12:03.891) But I think with low barriers to entry, without training and without appropriate guidance and or mentorship programmes or officially recognised training, I think there’s a lack of clear standards and I think as a result a lot of people are self-taught. And I think you only really learn what’s good by understanding what’s wrong. And so I think, know, over a decade, you know, almost 15 years of experience, you start to really understand where things can go wrong in solar, what looks right, what’s good solar looks like.
I talk about what does good solar look like? that for us is, it’s warranties, it’s bank abilities, it’s building with an enduring nature in mind. We’re telling our clients we’re building 25, 30 year enduring assets. So we need to make sure that’s thought about. Thought about from O perspectives, how are we going to access and maintain these systems over the years and actually the bankability and provenance of the equipment we’re putting in. And so I think all of those come into play. And so for me, is that,
It’s that advocacy piece and something that we really want to be part of in helping continue to shape and positively enhance the industry. Well, recently I was asked to draft an article for Forbes magazine about solar. I enormous amounts of research and what I learned was there’s over 2.2 terawatt solar installed worldwide. The value of solar that’s already installed is more than the GDP of certain countries like Russia and Spain. So there’s tremendous volume.
already out there. Also the NREL, National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US, they forecast we can expect another 75 terawatts of solar. it’s going to be an explosion in volume. Yeah, it’s huge. And people might not see the importance of ethics now, but any failures that get made get replicated hundreds of thousands of times. Yeah, if you build on that, think as Desnest have said recently, that at a high level, I think it’s something like we’ve got to treble our capacity of clean energy by …
2030 is the target. You and actually you think what we’ve done to date and .. the volume and actually we now want to treble it in the best part of five years and actually that’s a monumental undertaking not least when you if you think power wise that’s the same I think as you know roughly 20 Hinckley points so we need to build 20 Hinckley point equivalents of power in five years and we see how slowly and methodical that sector builds because of for some so obvious reasons but you know we’re going
Vikram Kumar (14:33.491) further and faster and we need to go further and faster as part of this approach and so we need to do things with certain key parameters in mind and understanding you know the requirements of it. started your business in 2016 we’re coming up to around nine years.
Are you able to tell us a bit more about your eco, how many people work in your companies, which kind of contracts you work with? us bit more colour about your actual business if you listening to engaged Yes, Your Eco operating across the UK and indeed internationally, and I think I’ll touch upon that later and some of our more interesting projects and areas of operations. We’ve got about 30 employed persons within the organisation working across from the field team throughout the office and support side, and provide a whole host of services
Vikram Kumar (15:21.049) We predominately are delivering rooftop solar in the commercial and industrial space along with construction.
but also on the agricultural side as well and what we call private estates which is sort of a mixture of perhaps high net worths or large properties. We do do an element of ground mounted systems but those are predominantly for self consumption purposes, some of those with aesthetic consideration let’s think on listed or heritage sites particularly on the private estate space or indeed it might be that a particular building needs more capacity and it has some redundant space around it. We’re certainly more in favour
of the self-consumption model and working on solar on that basis. And as you said, we’re going nine years as of this month. So one more year to push to our decade birthday. We’ve got a great team in place. We, think, you know, probably over 50 % of our team are ex-military across from the three services, so from the army, the Navy and the Royal Air Force. And I think that’s really important for us to champion some of those values and what we call our military approach to project management.
We’ve recently been recognised as a silver member of the Armed Forces Covenant, which is a real privilege and hopefully testament to the work we’ve been doing on that front. And I think when you look wider and further afield at our business, know, as I said to you, what makes us different and where we are, we’re very much committed to what we’re doing. We talked about that people, planet, profit, and I’m a firm believer that, you’ve got to look after your people. And actually profit shouldn’t be a dirty word because by making profit, you are able to look after your people and you’re able to look after the planet and we can make those.
So actually we want to make sure that we’ve got a good team around us who are buying into what we’re about. And also that we’re leading from the front. We certainly seek that high performance standard. As I said, we’re a B Corp and that means a lot to us, but we’re also ISO accredited across all of their suite of ISO accreditations, which we hope to be a kite mark of quality. We don’t seek to be badge collectors, you know, sort of like the Scouts organisation where you see the children with a thousand and one badges down the arms or along the side of the
Vikram Kumar (17:27.453) vans. We want to be the creme de la creme really and be a position of advocacy and that high performance and a brand that people can trust and go to. Fantastic. What is the Armed Services Covenant? What does it entail? It’s in effect supporting the armed forces and the reserve element of the armed forces. So it talks about how you will support former service men and women and how you will continue to support those who are operating in the reserves by enabling them additional time to go
do activities or training or support and indeed should someone be mobilized how you can support them throughout their period along with their family and indeed you know giving them comfort and job security around all of those areas. And it’s an interesting time you’ve chosen to start business just just after the turbulence of Brexit there was Covid in between which was still kind of recovering from the Ukraine energy crisis you know we just seem to be starting one crisis after another how did you navigate your company culture do you have
people working remotely in the office, how have you managed to create a team, chemistry? Do you know what’s interesting? I don’t think there’s ever a good time to start a business. I don’t think there’s ever a bad time to start a business. I think it is what it is and it’s the realities that you know if we all had a if we all had a crystal ball and could see the future probably none of us would do what we did I guess who knows. It could be scary, could be enlightening. I think the reality though from the start is we were very much a small lean and agile team and we were working remotely.
And actually it’s only been over the last couple of years that the team have come back together in the office at their own wish. Before that all of our team were working remotely and it was a great ability for us to really be able to pivot and be a lean organisation and be nimble, especially in a time where there were cost uncertainties and you did have economic conditions that made things challenging. So we’ve taken that approach, which has hopefully been the right approach and sees us today as a strong
financially performing business, which is always where we wanted to be. But I think, you know, those times are always challenging, but you have to adopt. And I think you need to spot trends and understand where things look. When we were doing, throughout COVID, we were delivering some large programmes for a supermarket store, you know, and actually, I think the key worker classification went down and we carried on, you know, and actually it was quite good. The roads were clear and, you know, we got on with what we needed to do. So, and in some ways it was a positive time for us.
Vikram Kumar (19:57.093) crisis was obviously positive from an economic perspective for us, albeit it did create another sort of flashpoint high point. And actually I think what we all crave in the renewable sector is very much a straight line of work and income generation and opportunity. hopefully that stability will now entail a little bit more. But I also think more recently with the changing government, I think there’s perhaps an element of economic
uncertainty at the moment and I think there’s a bit of a lack of confidence. We certainly saw a dip and a strong lull in inquiries and opportunities when the budget was being announced. So October through to January, February was very quiet for us. But now we’ve really seen it pick up. And I think there’s certain drivers and factors around that. I think one is noting that people know that they need to go on a net zero journey. Their clients are demanding them to be more sustainable. Their stakeholders
as their employees and people know that it’s right to be, you know, a more, to transition to more of a low carbon society. And I think that’s one of the drives that people do. And I think solar has an economic benefit that helps enable it. And so I think that is driving things. I think there’s very few carrots at the moment and very few sticks, if you like. So actually for some people where you had a closing date of feed in tariff and you had a hiatus of work and people said, if you don’t move now, you won’t be able to do solar. I think solar is one of those things.
say it’s like a merry-go-round. It sits on the merry-go-round until someone’s ready to jump off. You can give a great proposal, your sustainability manager might think it’s great, your ops director might think it’s great, your finance director might want to buy or add to his fleet of trucks or lorries or whatever the assets they’re investing are in. But there will be some stage where it goes, actually, no, this is the right time and we need to do it. And so I think, as I said, that roller coaster or the sort merry-go-round continues and people continue
to drop off at various stages. Although I do think it changes industries or sectors very drastically. think we saw agriculture, which I think, you know, farmers are always at the front of maybe entrepreneurialism is a fair way of saying it for the farming community. They moved early with solar. They recognised the role, you know, especially when you still look at, you know, people like the poultry sector, they’re very shrewd operators who understand the returns. And I think, you know, when Ukraine came around on the heightened energy prices,
Vikram Kumar (22:25.379) is those who hadn’t gone did go. And I think now you’re left with people who are waiting for something to give an economic opportunity. Or, you know, it’s people who are at the right time that they’re redeveloping a farm, you know, they’re upgrading the capacity, they’re changing or regeneration or something’s happening. Or indeed a change of changing of the guard when a new generation of farmers coming through and actually they want to do into it. So I think some people would say that they saw an 80 % reduction in agricultural
know, delivery of solar systems over the last year. So I think there’s so many factors at play, but I think now the sector’s in a healthy place and I think people’s genuine net zero drivers is pushing the industry along. And obviously I think public sector money is becoming more more applicable to that.
Fantastic. You’ve got a triple whammy of discipline. You’re a football coach. were in the army. You worked with your wife. You know, you’ve got a team of about 30 people. And, you know, I’m not against working from home at all. I nearly always work from home. Yeah. And what I’ve learned is everyone’s different. Some people can’t work on their own. No, no, no, absolutely. So how do you drive discipline and focus within your team? I think this is where we come, you know, we bring that sort of military
as we call it and we talk very much about this concept of mission command which is by telling people what you want them to do but not telling them how to do it and being prescriptive. You almost need to give people a left and right of arc so you know if you were on a military range you would say you can’t shoot that way and you can’t shoot that way but you can shoot in the middle and I need you to do this. So it’s by defining those arcs and enabling people creativity and empowering them to work within. Hey your budget for this job is this, your constraints are this, this is how I need you and this
is what we want the project to look like at the end. And using terminology like the main effort, we will say the main effort this week is to secure this contract or to deliver this. And then people know and can align themselves to what’s needing to be done. But I think it’s important not to be prescriptive, but give people accountability and ownership. But ultimately, and Amanda will always wear that broad shoulder of accountability that sits with us. And we will make sure that we have empowered our teams, but they know that we will
Vikram Kumar (24:44.329) we will shoulder it and that they are fully supported because we work on that basis of shared understanding and trust and aligned objectives.
Fantastic. We are in the age of disinformation and I’ve done enormous research recently going down the AI rabbit hole as well, so I’m verifying myself as well. I write a small blog and in this research from the Office of National Statistics that the UK in 2019 used about 1644 terawatt hours of energy. That’s a lot. It’s quite a lot and predominantly it’s fossil fuel. The number one energy use was electricity generation from gas. Yep. So this is controversial because of what’s going on.
Ukraine we are in a literal energy war yeah and it would be an actual war if there was a nuclear involved and what I learned in this research was if the UK electrified everything that could be electrified like such as heat pumps and electric cars then that’s 1644 terawatt hours of energy could be reduced to 500 terawatt hours so profit and purpose are very much interlinked and it’s not always a level playing field because we have to be honest once we
when they’re cannibalizing people’s PPAs and revenue models and people live from fossil fuels, the tensions are tied to them, and it may not always be a level playing field because if you put like for like a . electrification you essentially bankrupt the fossil fuel industry. So what are your views on that? How do you stay competitive? do you know it’s a myriad of…
you know complex questions and understand this great book by Jeremy Leggett who founded Solarcentury carbon war rooms and it talks about the unrealized few reserves on balance sheet sitting as assets that can’t be realized because of the fact that could help construct into that way of bringing down the fuel industry fossil fuel industry i think i say to people we live in a perfectly imperfect world at the moment and what do i mean about that i think
Vikram Kumar (26:47.829) lot of things that are not perfect. There’s a lot of things we think are good, but I think there’s challenges in everyday life. You know, we talk about electric vehicles and people talk about, you know, the embodied carbon in an electric car or the embodied carbon in a battery or actually the ethics around solar panels.
Actually, I flip that question to people though and I say, you when I look at my mobile phone, you know, like many people have an Apple device, you know, where’s that come from and how does that fall in the same bracket? Where do our clothes come from? Where are our clothes made? What are we deciding to be ethically conscious about or sustainably conscious and mindful about versus other items? And I think that’s driven by items that perhaps other industries might
not want to be seen as stand on their own two feet. so this whole disinformation, you look back to history, we’ll always say that those industries with strong abilities to lobby will lobby other industries or against others and create a groundswell of support or disinformation to be able to work against. And I think we find ourselves in that position at the moment where there is so much information
day that if you went down every rabbit hole or took it into your mind you’d just be wrapped up wrapped around your axles. You mentioned AI, I don’t think AI could probably tell you what’s right or wrong and I work on the basis that I’m you know put all of that politics aside and the information just go you know what sometimes it’s trying to do and break things down for simplicity. I’m not a huge I say fan that’s probably the wrong term. I’m not someone who engages much with you
outer space and the planet system and everything else because my little brain boggles and is already overwhelmed just dealing with this one planet, let alone the others. You don’t want to colonise Mars? No, no, I think let’s focus on what we’ve got first before we’re looking at our escape option to Mars and let’s try and do what we can here. And so I think one step at a time, but some things make sense to do and I think when they make sense, you do them. I also think politics and the nature of short term politics in this country does not help.
Vikram Kumar (29:08.409) and I think it slows us down. You you’ve only got to look at inter-party views at the moment and where stronger voices are coming from, other players who are perhaps making more of a play and gaining some successes and the rhetoric there is very much anti-renewables. I think, you know, the human individual is making greater change with their own feet by demanding and delivering change than we are at a
level or strategic level and I think there is just a fundamental lack of cohesion. think unless you are in a sort of more dictatorial approach then I don’t think you can apply that. I mean if you look at China for instance and what China has achieved and the way it’s transforming its infrastructure, its cultural view on energy and transport and logistics, I mean it is just fascinating, incredible and off the scale for what has been achieved.
you compare what we achieve in the UK on a similar basis. Now, people will talk about politics, or talk about ethics and all these things. I’m not talking about any of those and I’m setting those aside for one moment because I know they’re factors. But fundamentally, you have to have strategic buy-in and it has to be driven if we want to achieve that huge transformational change. So I think what we’re doing at the moment works. I think it’s perfectly imperfect. It’s definitely not perfect. But at least I guess we’re doing something.
Fantastic. Well AI is a double-edged sword because I think it has the same flaws as humans and I’ve recently taken up the £200 per month subscription because I’ve been exhausting it too much with the rabbit holes I’ve been going down. There’s a specific reason for that. The company which I represent in Switzerland, Studer Cables, they used to be called LEONI before, have delivered to 100 gigawatt of solar worldwide in pure cable volume. About 2.5 gigawatts in the UK. 100 gigawatts sounds like a
but it’s less than 5 % of the global solar install base and big doesn’t mean better at all and it’s frightening for me because there’s an element of personal liability because there isn’t a shutdown device that can switch solar panels off very easily and I’ve felt personal responsibility to develop some safety so AI is good in that sense because now I can upload 10 attachments, Single Line diagrams, IEC standards
Vikram Kumar (31:38.089) and ask detailed questions so it works in that regard because it can quickly deliver a lot of information that will take you a year to get. In the other sense, AI can also go down the rabbit hole and it mirrors your personality and your mood. You can change what it thinks. So if someone’s not of self-aware, they can totally go down the disinformation rabbit hole. But you’ve had nine years of your own business, you seem very happy with what you do. What would you say are your most memorable projects?
I think it’s probably some of the international projects. I touched upon Nepal and I think refurbishing a 30kW Hydro scheme out there meant an awful lot in delivering a programme of solar around the schools in locality, especially from a purposeful and seeing the direct aftermath and effects of that.
you know, of the natural disaster in the earthquake that hit Nepal back in 2015. And also being involved in some other projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Varunga National Park. There was a scheme we did on the electrification of Don Bosco, which is, think, it’s the largest orphanage in Goma. I think it’s listed as one of the most dangerous countries in the world. And so actually being on the ground there and delivering positive effects certainly has a event. I, you know, also I mentioned earlier.
Richard Branson and some of that inspiration. I actually had a chance encounter with him after Hurricane Irma when I met him at the airport in the British Virgin Islands and actually since then we’ve been doing quite a bit of work for Virgin and their charities including him opening one of our off-grid systems we delivered as part of an off-grid school we helped build, a temporary school fabricated from shipping containers which we built to provide immediate aftermath and positive effect, not something we’d done prior albeit we’d made an office previously.
out of a shipping container and knew we could turn our hand to it. And so I think that meant an awful lot. actually there’s much more, there’s so many rewarding projects and programmes we’ve been involved in. And I think, you know, in the UK we’ve got some wonderful projects at the moment, you know, where we’re involved in megawatt plus rooftops as part of a rollout for a particular company, a PLC firm on that side, which is great, and some other well-known PLCs. And I think for us, you know,
Vikram Kumar (33:53.887) Delivering projects for the likes of the NHS has been really meaningful. We’ve done a large project and programmes down in Cornwall for them across that trust there which has been great. And we’ve got more to come there and other areas of everything from schools we’ve been involved in too. We have recently done an exciting project which certainly was a great one for and actually was quite a fitting one and meant a lot where we took an old system off the roof for National Trust at their head office in Swindon which was initially
a system installed by Solar Century probably two decades ago and actually it was really meaningful in a way because I ended up doing quite a lot of installs for Solar Century early days and I think they were actually one of our suppliers and we were even installing on their IKEA program and other things in prior history and so it was really fitting to come back to an install and almost refurbish it for the next 30 years and what was refreshing was actually we talk about standards and everything else and there being some challenges was this system was
Great. It was working well. It was performing. It was well labeled. The drawings matched what we saw. The workmanship quality was high. And actually it was great to tell the story and hear from others, you know, who previously had worked at Solar Century, who are now, you know, working in senior roles across the sector, who are all reflected fondly on this project and for us to sort of repurpose it and reinstall it.
and bring it up to present day standards and give it a new lease of life for another 30 years was really quite powerful, I think, and a really proud project on our side. I think that and some of the international ones are great. I think we’re also about to do the Caribbean’s largest rooftop.
which is a project we’re starting in October, which would be a tremendous accolade, another SolarEdge . project on the international scale for us, and of that size. So yeah, a huge amount of memorable projects, a huge amount of amazing projects forthcoming as well. And I think so many to talk about and wonderful clients and people we’ve worked with along the way. Fantastic. I’ve worked in the Congo remotely through Solarcentury in the past, also Kenya and Eritrea, which was an
Vikram Kumar (36:13.661) project itself. for yourself, because you work in some of your terrains and locations, and we have loads of people listening to our podcast as they’re learning tool what is your thought about technology such as Victron or off-grid systems versus on-grid systems? you have any specific views? No, not hugely specific views. I think it goes back to the provenance of the equipment and making sure it’s good. think, you know, without doubt Victron really are a market leader and
off-grid systems and if anyone said to me we work closely with an off-grid provider a company called leading edge who we partner with and who supports us on all our off-grid systems and I know predominantly that they will use Victron and we will use Victron when it comes to it. We don’t do so much off-grid ourselves as we partner with those guys to do that element of it and but I think the critical element is is making sure the kit is fit for purpose but also it’s got the ability to be maintained and looked after. I say
I’ve just been in the British Virgin Islands, as I said we’re doing a programme of about 3-5 megawatts at the moment on some of their key infrastructure for the government and their national grid. And I’ve also been asked to go look at some old systems that aren’t working for other parties out there. And what’s commonplace is that a lot of these are installed with technologies that are not well known and don’t have readily available spares and not easy to understand. Often come linked to the marine
environment let’s say because of the nature of the environment to which they’re in and actually I think we need to look at you we can’t say global standardization but it is making sure that you know the kit we’re using is you know fit for purpose and is bankable and it’s going to do what it says on the tin I always call Ron I always called solar the Ron seal of renewables I remember the advert that it does what it says on the tin and I think it does really in so many ways so I think you know look for us we we predominantly only use
Solar Edge. We’re one of their, I think, premium partners in the UK and have worked with them extensively over the last decade and it’s all we will use as an installer and we promote it for so many other, you know, important elements in particular on the safety side and the likes of RC62 and looking at the compliance there and the rapid shutdown and all those favorable elements. But you know, for me it’s just about getting the right equipment. I often say without wanting to dumb solar down, it’s a mechanical
Vikram Kumar (38:43.345) no set. You’ve got to do it well. You’ve got to have the right tools for the job. It’s important, know, torque settings, you know, all these right things that everything from the engineering calculations to ballast plans to torque settings, you know, actually, you can’t just get your impact driver out and whiz up a screw and, you know, just whiz it in and, you know, grind it out. These things have tolerances and they need to be built in accordance with it. And that’s a real focus for us on the way we try and manage and proactively undertake
take one of our key elements is all of our site managers who are all as a minimum triple STS although most of them SMSTS qualified is having those points of contact and all our sites who oversee the minutiae, the daily reporting and the testing to make sure that what we do stands the test of time. as I said with a lot of this solar that we’ve installed overseas we call it expeditionary solar. We stick it in a shipping container, ship it to somewhere in the world, we get it at the other end. Although what the key I always say to people and this is an oversimplification is panels
panels mounting we make sure we work to you know hurricane strength engineering with our partners there so we’re designing to cat3 strength and a lot of these which is required by mandated by grids but also insurance requirements and national rules in particular in the Caribbean and it’s something we comply with and spend a lot of time on but it’s also then understanding grid codes so you know if we’re installing in the Caribbean it’s making sure that we’re bringing solar edge with the appropriate grid codes in from the United States market to meet with their requirements and the same with other
areas. So you know there’s so many things to consider but also so many opportunities. I think it’s just about getting it right and using good equipment. How’s your business split between export and domestic? It’s predominantly I would say you know what as of the international market was very high and almost 50-50 in the early days of the business when we were looking at a lot more of delivering the solar post-conflict and disaster and it almost became a niche of the business I guess. But that’s probably also startup and
understanding where you are an opportunity. I would say over the last couple of years it’s been a lot less actually and it’s been negligible really whilst things are developing. But at the moment you could argue that it’s perhaps 20 % at the moment of what we’re doing and we’re seeing that rise. But I think that’s also a result of a surgence in demand with a particular opportunity versus a slightly flatter market in the UK but although that’s now seemingly ramping. So I think you know we’re probably
Vikram Kumar (41:12.895) a of a surge internationally but you know core core market is UK very much commercial industrial rooftop. And health and safety is an important area and I don’t want to get into the grim details but there’s been lot of injuries of solar falls from high electrocutions and people thought it was just Lego just fit in and it works and the issue we’ve got is you’ve got DC electricity if it catches a worker it’s not letting them
and people underestimate the dangers as I there are fewer injuries in 132kV substations than with solar worldwide because people underestimate what they’re dealing with and so how do you ensure a strong health and safety culture with respect to dealing with DC electricity falls from high handling for example the modules themselves that are needed 40 kilograms solar panels are getting to over a ton per pallet there has been crushing injuries with
people unloading unsafely. You have to be rigorous with it and I think again it comes back to our military approach and it comes back to being very clear that we expect no less than health and safety comes first and is at the fore of what we do and actually everyone deserves the right and it’s not just the right it is a mandated necessity that the best conditions possible are afforded with all risks mitigated so that people can go home each day after work no one should ever go to a
unsafe place of work. And I think that’s a really key element of it. You’re absolutely right on all of those features. And I think unfortunately, the low barriers to market without regulation and without people having experience just creates such heightened risk. And I always say to the team, you don’t know what you don’t know, but when you do know it, you can deal with it. And over the years, of course, we’ve refined as a business, but it’s making sure things, simple things such as
you know, if you’re dealing with a fragile roof that it’s netted but also making sure the nets are tested. If anyone were to fall through what is your policy and process for retesting those nets and actually to this extent where we look at a lot of our rescue plans and actually how you follow them through, through actually if someone falls from a roof and falls into a net, most safety, most rams will say we’re going to mitigate the risk and we’re going to have a net in place. My question is always so what and the army asks you
Vikram Kumar (43:42.455) this question, so what does that mean and how do you create an action on to deal with it? The reality is if you fall into a net, how do you get someone out the net? You can’t just leave them there. What if they’ve got a threatening injury and they need some urgent attention? It’s really looking at how does that work? So we’ve practiced and we’ve sent our teams on courses on fall arrest and actually recovery plans, spinal boards on site, everything you need to be able to lift an operative out. That’s just one instance, but actually how
you demark, how do you make the area safe, you know, and also testing. We had a quality and standards day the other day, which we do every sort of quarter where we bring everyone back in and we do another mandated day of full training. You know, before large projects, we will ask teams to make off an MC4 and crimp it, put it in a bag so we’ve got samples so we can know and testing those conditions. But also for me, it’s also where a real peace of mind and comfort comes in with the technology. And as I said,
We use SolarEdge as standard and it’s all we do use really because of some of its safety features. You know, the low voltage system that it drops the optimizers and the DC runs to, the module level isolation, you know, the rapid shutdown. It’s both beneficial from an installation perspective, but also from a client perspective is massively advantageous. And I know people will say to me, but you don’t need that. And actually it’s not mandated. And you’re right, it’s not mandated. But I say a huge but.
If you look at instances or events that have been, a lot of them are occurring in string level systems that are poorly maintained, might have been poorly installed at the time without huge foresight. We’ve got to learn from those. actually we talk about, you know, RC62 and we’ve been doing a lot of work with our clients on this and, know, we put a fire risk assessment into all of our projects before we start. And I say to people, there’s some really clear benefits you can do. You know, bifacial modules, remove them.
the plastic back sheet. Great. You’ve removed the fire burning element, know, stainless steel, metal. You know, one of the things that I know is a real concern and we work with one of our partners, Sun Fixings on the mounting side. We’ve just installed a system on an in-roof system, which is in effect a trapezoidal sheet that goes down on top of the battens and the rafters and then the panels go on top of it. Simple, but ever so effective because, you know, if you look at a traditional in-roof system, we’re putting a plastic tray into someone’s roof.
Vikram Kumar (46:11.926) and then a plastic back sheeted module on top of it. Now there’s no regulation that says you know that’s not fine or warranted but it does make you go surely there’s a bit of a risk here where we’re putting high DC voltage and stuff that’s hot and warm and prone and so I think for us we look at how we mitigate that you know how do we deliver safe systems how do we use things like you know bifacial modules as standard how do we use solar edge as standard and other areas we
can continue to work safely in all those realms and I think that’s a real key area for us as a business. Regulation is that’s left intentionally flexible because there’s infinite different ways on how you can wire an electrical system. A badly designed system is a toaster.
and a solar rooftop can literally be a fire. In London Underground they changed and improved the standards after the King’s Crossfire. I think it was 1989 where the escalators used to be wooden and people used to smoke on them. And then they’ve learned, know, by these things that are low smoking houses are free. And I agree with you, there is a sort of regulator missing that regulates the market and it allows people who have no empathy, no care, care for their fellow human being to get into solar and they will.
sell you something that might cause a danger and then fold the company. I choose very carefully who I work with as a result but at the same time because there can be poor regulation sometimes through things that are unavoidable such as lockdowns, labour shortages, may not be enough people to get around, is inflationary aspects that more and more people are leaving engineering and construction kind of jobs, know, why be an engineer when you can be a banker? Absolutely.
and six figures without doing anything, without taking any design risk. And so you talk a lot about safety, but how do you be competitive against the cowboys? I think you have to recognize that, you know, safety…
Vikram Kumar (48:13.443) doesn’t have to be a huge premium and it just has to be part of the process of what’s done. So I think there’s a clear requirement to inform customers and clients of their requirements and their own roles within what’s set out under CDM regulations. And I think it’s important that you embed that culture within the business, but equally that we make sure…
you know, when we’re looking at this, that we factor it into our costs and we look at how we can deliver it this consistently and routinely and like anything, how we continue to, you know, seek to be competitive whilst maintaining that element of standards, which is so critical. I also think, you know, we’re very clear that we will, if ever required, tell a client, no, we’re not doing this project and I’m not afraid to walk away from projects and I’m not away and I won’t be. Your customer always comes
first they say, I would challenge that and say they do until it comes to the safety of my employees and I will not let a customer
undermine the safety of my employees. And we had that recently with a client on a project and it was a very shoddy scaffold there, erected over uneven ground and they were asking us to do things that the team weren’t comfortable with. And I say to the team, I say, I give a note out and I try and record voice notes at least once, twice a week and try and give everyone a real, you know, understanding what’s going on in the business. And I always, always finish by saying, please always remember my phone is always on 24 seven. If you need me, call me.
And I sincerely mean that and the guys called me from sight and said Nick we are not comfortable with this.
Vikram Kumar (49:54.502) you know, for them to come to me, they obviously had concern, which is all I need to hear. And so for me, I called the client, I said, we’re not doing it, you fix it, or else we don’t carry on. Clients said, yeah, but you’re contracted to do this. I said, I will not let them work in an unsafe condition. And I wouldn’t And I think it’s about having really clear boundaries. You know, and one of the Sandhurst principles is, you know, there’s this whole serve to lead, lead to serve analogy with what it actually represents. And sometimes I say to people,
You need to have this, well, serve to lead is the motion and the phrase.
actually sometimes I call it the need to lead to surf and sometimes you need to be strong and say no this is this is what we’re doing and making a call on it and that is in particular with health and safety but as you said going back to technology there are a real lack of standards you know it’s interesting we’re delivering over in the Caribbean and their standards are much tighter you know through their sort of town and country planning which is their regulatory body you know and you’re almost looking back to NEC 2017 when that was implemented in the US you know calling for rapid shutdown and
module level isolation. you see things like, I think Zurich Risk Resilience recently wrote a paper, a white paper on things, you know, talking much more about, you know, the need for rapid shutdown module level isolation. And I think, you know,
If you want to remove risk, you have to go that way. And a lot of people will say to me, yeah, but Nick, but we’re not cost competitive if we use those products. And I say, yeah, but equally, you’re not delivering the best system you can and you owe it to clients. And I think for as long as there are no standards, then of course, suppliers and manufacturers make products that might be sub market requirement or not necessarily fit for purpose. And I’m not saying all are, but for us, it’s a very firm view.
Vikram Kumar (51:48.048) we we use SolarEdge and we mitigate risks this way. I also talk about installer error and Amanda’s been doing a lot of work with colleges and Somerset, doing training programmes for new installers coming into the market because I think we need to train this rather than just bringing people off the streets and saying, hey go plug in some solar. And people say to me, know, there are risks with technology and installation when we look at O&M when we look at systems.
But if you solve technology and installation, you mitigate a lot of the risk for through life. And I think so by using these technologies that provide rapid shutdown, safer features, safer solar, how key is that? And looking at fire safety, then that’s a huge element. And also by using this technology, you can remove some of the risk around people.
Because with the best one in the world, I might be the best installer. I very much aren’t and I’m not allowed to use power tools. state that now, the guys will always happy for me to carry a panel on site and that’s about as far as it goes. But you know, I might be making off an MC4 and if you call me and I quickly pick up my phone and I’ve made off a thousand MC4s and all of a sudden I get lost, that’s a point of weakness that creates a point of weakness in the system if I get that MC4 connection wrong. Now for 10 years nothing might happen, but that is still a point of weakness.
I’ve created. Now I might be the best installer bar none, but I have to be on my A game and perfect 100 % of the time, which we know we’re not all perfect and we know we have off days, you know, be that illness, be that, you know, tired from kids or whatever it might be. You know, we’re all, you know, we’re all human beings. We can’t be perfect 100 % of the time. So I do believe we need to use technology to remove and mitigate some of the risk of people.
absolutely and uh… know I studied Law for five years in the past and there’s a proverb that sticks with me which is power corruption absolutely power corruption absolutely and in energy there’s money and there’s literal power as well and there’s a detachment in the services industry with what goes on for example some of larger inverters you can have you know twenty four strings in parallel and
Vikram Kumar (53:54.599) People don’t understand what damage you can do. can blow someone’s hand off 1500 volts DC, 1000 volts DC. And our engineer, don’t want to name him by name, but he thinks…
so the voltage is getting dangerously high and it’s getting even higher soon with 2kV 2000V modules coming soon and above 2000V having unshielded string cables it becomes a hazard that if touch it you can get electrocuted. There is a huge design risk but the greed that feeds the loop is if you’re an EPC and you’re taking design risk the developer has a mighty skin in the game this one will just move the project on, get the commissions from…
getting funding which often banks on the EPC and so there was a point where Solarcentury also just stopped the EPC for other people because of that they did their own projects. So how do you manage your sort of design and professional indemnity and liability risk? What size projects do you work with? Well we typically install on projects from 30-50 kilowatts through to 1-2 megawatt projects so we’re certainly not taking it to some of those scales and actually I think it’s about also recognising one skill set. We have a Huge wealth of technical understanding, technical competence, and track record in those areas and we’re very comfortable with it. If you took us outside of that, you, and you start asking us to do 10 20 megawatt, you know, solar farms, we’re going to say no. because actually that’s not our area of expertise or comfort. Now, I think a lot of people will say yes, because they see an opportunity or a cost.
Vikram Kumar (55:25.781) megawatts with millions Yeah, but the reality is that the risk is too great within that. Um, and so for us, it’s about staying in your lane and knowing what you’re good at
Vikram Kumar (55:34.365) you’re good at, but also understanding what you’re not good at and where you have a blind side. And then you need to ask yourself, can you mitigate that by bringing in partners and specialists? And if so, how do you align the risk and what does that look like and how do you know they’re good? And also ensuring you have the right competency to deliver it and indeed insurances and everything else that goes with it. know, we, we like everyone, you pay a lot of insurance, but it’s important to get it right. You know, professional services.
and supporters as well and specialists who might be able to provide elements of design or CDM support. You need to get it right and so actually you don’t know what you don’t know but there’s a lot of people who do know a lot and you can call on their support for what is a very small sum in the grand scheme of things and so I think it’s very important to have good people around at all levels both within the business and to partner with outside.
A lot of people are afraid of C&I or commercial industrial projects because they may be below 2 megawatts but the engineering challenge can be greater than a solar farm because if a transformer blows up in a field there are hardly any witnesses, there isn’t a building at risk.
I’d like to mention the names of some projects but I’ve worked on some high profile ones. One of the biggest challenges are the electrical system. the powerflow or within the grid of an airport or a factory maybe actually influencing the production? Do you get involved with the more detailed electrical studies within the commercial sites? absolutely. We will take on all elements of those projects. And where we have a huge amount of in-house competency, our technical director
comes from a charted electrical background, mechanical, so we bring a wealth of experience on that side and also within our own team across the operational level, including our development manager, Lawrence, who comes as a trained commercial electrician himself. So we’ve got a lot of in-house knowledge, but we can also bring other specialists to bear for that. And I think it’s about bringing the right partners to bear. But you’re right, the electrical element’s key. You can oversimplify, and I suppose I’m often guilty of oversimplifying solar and saying it’s a meccanno set
Vikram Kumar (57:46.63) Carnot set with some electrical connections that plugs into the grid, which it is in its fundamental form.
But people can take that too fundamentally and that’s where it goes wrong. It’s understanding that that is the case but there’s a huge amount of electrical design and elements that have to go in it to make sure it’s right. And the sizing and the calculations and understand the loads and what things look like. We’ve been developing cable engineering software for last 10 years and I can tell you it’s very complicated. Some engineers spend seven years becoming chartered electrical engineer or more and certain projects are day one for them.
chap that works with me on this is called Stephen McFadyen he’s got 40 years experience he’s been all around the world and one of the things that quite advanced that people miss on is like power factor correction yeah essentially how the electrons move around an airport or a factory if the system is inefficient you’re gonna lose 30 % of your solar just operating the system so those things are quite heavy and boring but important we can get into that in the future but what do you think about batteries and EVs?
at all? Yeah, we do. We will. I drive a hybrid myself. I don’t drive an EV because I would have too much range anxiety with the amount of mileage I do. know, one day I might be in Cornwall, the next I’m in Norfolk or London or the, you know, northwest of England. So that that that precludes me. I think, you know, ethically, you look at, know, especially having worked out directly in the Congo and
you know, looking at the continued conflict we’ve only seen in the news between, you know, Rwanda and conflict, Rwanda and the Congo that, you know, continues to enable the flow of minerals outside of one country into another. You know, we look at the ethics around it and let alone the sustainability. There’s a whole element around there and it goes back to the perfect, imperfect reality of what we look like and actually of how we see it through lenses, you know, through to how do we get our clothes and all those elements and cars. You it’s, it’s, you
Vikram Kumar (59:51.475) open up Pandora’s box if you start trying to compare one to the other. But they certainly have a role to play and I think the electrification of the grid is an important one. My view always with electric vehicles is if I had one comment would be you know people need to understand that by having an electric vehicle you are not saving the planet just because you have an electric vehicle. It has to be the consideration of how you use it and fundamentally you want to be charging it from a clean renewable source with on-site generation.
wonderful cartoon in the Telegraph which was simply someone had their electric car and plugged it into a coal-fired power station and I think they say you save something like three percent carbon you know on electric vehicle and that’s all if you don’t use a renewable source so I think you do need a renewable source absolutely. Batteries again we go back to the same the constituent parts of a battery, ethics, sustainability all those around them and you know we don’t have to look too far even in Europe these days to see conflict and never evolving and I think
One of the recent Russian advancements has taken a large mineral deposit, which of course was also subject to Mr Trump and his views with Ukraine and mineral deals and how that all evolves now. the proliferation of conflict over raw materials is only ever increasing. And you see that the land grab in Africa and what that looks like and what that’s driven by, or up in Antarctica at the moment and all these claims to territory over perceived mineral rights. It’s huge.
But again, the role of the batteries is huge. But I think we also go back to the enabling conditions that batteries are not as commercially viable as perhaps we want them to be. think they stack up from a utility scale demand side response where there’s certain carrots to install them, which is why we talk about carrot and stick. There’s a lot of carrots in that sector to deliver demand side response capacity and why people are building it out. I think if you looked at domestic
setting, think batteries make sense. Much more because I think there’s also a more personal view on self-sufficiency. Can I be more self-sufficient? I talk about electricity grown at sources, organic energy. Can we grow organic, seasonally produced, environmentally friendly energy at source? And you want to put that in the battery and use more of that rather than bring stuff in. But commercially, there’s less and less. And I think when I do the numbers, and I think if you run storage at about 350 pounds a kilowatt,
Vikram Kumar (01:02:17.708) for instance, or you you might be up to 600 pounds a kilowatt hour, the cost of putting a unit of electricity through a battery is anywhere from I would say seven to 15 pence a kilowatt hour. Now if you then talk about the cost of growing your organic electricity kilowatt hour over the system’s lifespan assuming it runs as forecast you might be looking three to five pence. So add that to a battery. So the cost of electricity going through a battery is somewhere in the region of 10 up to 20 pence.
per kilowatt hour. So your savings based on current market rates is not always huge, but it can be depending on the threshold. I think there’s a huge piece on energy security and what that looks like, but again I don’t think there’s regulation that calls for it, mandates it, nor do I think there’s a character using it, nor do I think there’s a stick for not using it. And with a big capital expense, with a lot of players moving into the market battery sector and without huge confidence as always necessarily in which product’s right.
I think the early adopters move and others will go but we will see a groundswell of battery storage being installed in due course. And I also think there’s notions around do you entertain DC coupled storage now or AC coupled storage which you can easily retrospectively plug and play into the grid. But the challenge is always around DNO constraints. My view is we should slightly change that system. I believe that you should, I always say a well sized solar system should see about 70 % of it
self-consumed and 30 % of it meeting your on-site demand. So on that basis I would always advocate, I would like people to, you know, someone said what would your key for success be Nick? I would say you should be able to install a grid limited system to zero on your site without DNO requirements so long as it meets these stipulations and it doesn’t go above 25 % of your maximum import capacity maybe or 30 % of your import capacity to be confirmed.
what that number would look like. You know that gives people the ability to hit their self-sufficiency very quickly, which is one of the key pieces. I know we look at faults on the grid and take those into account as well, but there’s a huge amount of areas to be looked at. And then I think the other thing that we need to look at is much greater…
Vikram Kumar (01:04:33.741) stability around export rates, which I don’t think we’re seeing in the market. And I think the rise of utility providers also becoming installers is making an uncompetitive challenging landscape for the buyer who is stuck between this when they might want to use a local installer, but actually are being offered a very high rate. You you look at some of the domestic schemes being offered, and I saw recently without naming names, someone who was offering, I think, 40 pence export rate for your first year on
domestic system. Now that’s staggering because that doesn’t stack up because you’re only buying electricity at 25%. So that’s just a commercial ploy to gain more consumer base. And in doing so, if you said that that system exported 50 % of what it used or something, it might work out to be 500 quid. I bet there’s a clever marketing ploy there that someone’s just stuck 500 quid on the cost of the install to cover the excess costs of the export. But you know, it works and it attracts people to that without it being explained. And at the end of 10 years, at the end of the first year, 12 months, it goes back to being
Four or five pence. So, you know, lot of it is about customer acquisition strategies for people at the moment So again that whole perfectly imperfect piece and actually what’s the reality and when you look behind the look behind the screens? What does things look like? You know, there’s a commercial reality that it it’s a driver and so I go back to EVs and batteries and go the same is the case with them really as to what actually stacks up and makes sense and what’s commercially viable and when do others go and I suppose my last
point being we look back to the feeding tariff days in the early teens of the years there and most people wanted German made inverters. European German made inverters they were seen as the go-to. SMA. Yeah and you go back to so many of these now how many of those brands are still, I know SMA obviously is, but how many others brands are still working where so many of them fell by the wayside and couldn’t compete with the Chinese be it the panel manufacturers or the inverter manufacturers.
So actually it comes back to that economic stability that underpins your warranty. And again, that’s where you have to balance off the whole ethics, sustainability and bankability piece to understand what a good project looks like. I think there’s a very good reason why we’ve got global tensions, because China’s is still 100 gigawatts a year and just in Shenzhen they might have 27,000 electric buses and our whole country doesn’t have that many buses. So the scale is at a different level and we…
Vikram Kumar (01:07:02.148) there’s things about the Hawaii politics and so on. Because we do detailed cable engineering, we quite often laugh because it’s not intuitive. Someone has 10 EV chargers, 350 kilowatts each, from ABB or any brand, can power, et cetera. And they go, we want to feel green. We everything to be solar. And I’m like, Mr. Customer, do you understand what you’re asking for is a seven megawatt solar farm to power your…
10-20 charges. Yeah, because it’s 10 times 350 kilowatts three and a half megawatts Yeah, and that’s without the conversion losses and you want to fit a several megawatt solar farm on a petrol station Do you see the challenge with these? Yeah, absolutely and one area we were lucky enough to deal with was Braintree electric Forecourt which was featured on Top Gear EV Awards We did the cable sizing for the AC and DC input Because civils is most of the cost but if the design done wrong you can dig the road up again or
If they got TV cameras there and charging all wall-board trucks, you don’t want your charger. No, completely. It would be quite embarrassing. So it’s quite interesting in that respect in terms of scale and what makes sense and how many of the electrons are actually green electrons gets you thinking about demand management because solar is going to work in the 10-11 % capacity factor, 10-11 % of time. And if you’re charging EVs in the nighttime, you might not have any solar. So companies like Octopus are doing great things in that area.
but as we come towards the end of our podcast the last two things I want to ask yourself is
What kind of people do you want to collaborate with and what do you think is the future of Solar Photovoltaics, which is the title of this podcast? Yeah, think, look, for us, we’re keen to work with end clients, know, SME, business owners, those working in the sustainability field looking at, you know, that decarbonisation journey, facilities managers, but also banks and lenders. You know, we do a lot of advice to these types of peoples on what the market looks like and where it might be going.
Vikram Kumar (01:09:09.098) You know, in terms of the future, think for me, one of things I really want to advocate again is that the ethics and getting things right, but also the importance of good, high quality solar, you know, doing solar. What does good solar look like and how do we get there? Helping try and educate in my own way and hopefully bring some of my experience to bear and, you know, be an advocate ideally in this sector. And I think it’s essential for that energy independence and economic resilience.
You know, we’ve got a 25 year passive income potential, you know, through these solar assets, 25, 30 years. We need to see solar as a hedge against energy price volatility, but also as a part of that decarbonisation piece. And as a result, we’ve done an awful lot. But if I was to say one final piece, I would say we have to go further and faster. Fantastic. Nick, I’ve certainly enjoyed listening to you.
listening back to this podcast to reflect on my thoughts and thank you very much for joining us today. No really thank you very much thanks for having me it’s been great and hopefully it’s resonated with some of you. perfect and hopefully we’ll have your wife Amanda on the next podcast. Yeah that’d be great another insight that side. Thank you. Cheers.
Vikram Kumar (00:00) Welcome to the Future of Solar Photovoltaics podcast. My name is Vikram Kumar. We are being listened to now in 85 countries and today I have the absolute pleasure of welcoming Erin Mahan from the Sunspec Alliance. Erin, welcome.
Erin Mahan (00:13) Thanks so much, Vikram. It’s great to be here.
Vikram Kumar (00:15) Fantastic Erin and you are now our 14th guest on this podcast You do very important work with the SunSpec Alliance. We will get into the details on that very shortly But because we do deal with quite sensitive projects the kind of people we work with the credibility is very important so if you would like to kind of introduce yourself talk a little bit about your personal background your origins and Who you work for that would give us a great start
Erin Mahan (00:40) Yeah, absolutely. I’m happy to be on this podcast because I know that you’ve interviewed people all across the value chain. And I know that you’re really interested in investment and quality you have this quality first ethos. So I’m happy to contribute to that today. Again, my name is Erin Mahan and I live in Flagstaff, Arizona. I come from a multi-generational utility family from Oregon.
And that’s actually the home of the nation’s first long distance transmission lines. I grew up with a lot of dinnertime chat about grid safety and transmission dynamics and electrical hazards, which really set the tone for what I later studied and now my work with Sunspec Alliance. So today I am the director of membership at the Sunspec Alliance.
And the SunSpec Alliance is a nonprofit trade alliance that advances standards for distributed energy resources. In this podcast, I’ll use a couple different acronyms. One of them is DER, and that stands for Distributed Energy Resources. So SunSpec Alliance covers PV, energy storage, and grid communications, and I’ll talk to you more about that later. I went to school.
at the University of Oregon and the University of California Davis for my graduate studies. And otherwise, I’ve worked as a consultant for government contracts, particularly in technology, and now for the Sunspec Alliance, working to help our members facilitate the advancement of the DER industry.
Vikram Kumar (02:06) it’s interesting that you mentioned you’re from a utility background. Are you able to tell us a little bit more about that and having our research notes end drawn, what are your thoughts on that?
Erin Mahan (02:16) That’s right. Yeah. So my father worked for Portland General Electric, the electrical utility, and my grandfather worked for Northwest Natural Gas. So when I say I’m from a utilities family, basically everyone in my family worked for a utility. Portland General Electric was bought by Enron in 1997. And I remember that really well. There was a lot of high hopes for the future of electrification in our state.
Enron was rebranding everything that I saw around me. And then by 2007, by the time I was at university, the Enron scandal had happened and almost the entirety of Portland General Electric employees lost their retirement 401k plans. America was in the subprime mortgage lending crisis. And it was a fascinating time actually to be in university. 6 This collapse of Endron marked a pretty critical failure of oversight and utility regulation. that was a formative event for me. It pushed me to understand how policy frameworks can fail or how they can succeed and how we need to safeguard public infrastructure.
That really catalyzed my focus on international regulatory harmonization and eventually guided my transition into solar and compliance work. At the time I was at the university, like I said, and I was studying international law and humanities. Luckily, I had this chance to work on a few interesting bioeconomy and green economy projects.
One of them with the University of Padua’s Law and Investment in the Environment program and the American University Wake Forest University. And I started learning about the potential of the conto energia, the energy credits and what a renewable future could actually look like. So that inspired me to study the European Union, particularly policy in the European Union for quite a long time.
I did take a break. It was the wild west of Excel back then, and I transitioned into university teaching and science and business translation services for nearly 10 years. But I was still involved in this sort of business and technical landscape.
Vikram Kumar (04:25) utility regulation is an important topic. We have an issue with the water industry right now. The grid companies have their own politics. In solar, we’re no longer a cottage industry either. There’s two terawatts of solar installed worldwide. that’s why I was drawn to the SunSpec Alliance to understand probably because…
California may be a more mature market, what kind of regulations are involved and what kind of work you’re doing, but if you go deeper into that about Sunspec’s historical conditions, you are a master of German languages, is that right?
Erin Mahan (04:56) That’s right, I spent nearly six years in Germany after college. I was looking for an economy that was a little bit more stable than America’s in 2008, and Germany was it for me. And I really sharpened my grasp of technical language and systems thinking during that time.
But yeah, the formation of Sunspec also has to do with Germany, in fact, Vikram. in the early days, know, grids couldn’t handle more than 10 % of distributed energy resources, DER, due to imbalances. in Germany, this caused brownouts in the 1990s. So one real world case that helps illustrate this danger is that brownout experience. Germany had high PV adoption, but no smart inverter protocols.
this led to frequency instability and Germany was basically the first stress test for unmanaged PV penetration at scale. So what SunSpec does is we have these advanced DER controls that now allow up to 100 % of DER safely. And that was one of our founding influences. I always like to talk about
Daniel Juergens, The Prize. It’s a great book for the lessons about infrastructure. So energy transitions are never purely about technology, but they’re also about infrastructure, trust, and systemic alignment. For example, in the oil era, like in the book, it took decades to standardize refining processes and safety norms. And those who succeeded in standardizing, those who collaborated on that,
The ones who understood that interoperability is the path to industrial maturity, they are the ones who succeeded. So in solar, we went through a lot of the same evolution, but of course we’ve done it much faster because of climate change and global instability and cyber threats. That’s really forcing us to move at a faster speed.
So we can’t afford to build new energy infrastructure on a digital foundation that has fragmented standards or is insecure. So that’s kind of the background for what Sunspec does. The historical conditions that led to Sunspec’s creation came together in the aftermath of that 2008 financial crisis. So a lot of solar tech was proprietary back then. If a startup failed, its system became unsupported.
Our founder, Tom Tansey, wanted to create open standards together with other industry players that would protect those long-term investments in solar and ensure system longevity, interoperability, and grid compliance.
Vikram Kumar (07:24) Fantastic. And Sunspeck, how long have they been going for? 15 years, I’ve got in the notes. Do you have some more thoughts about that? How Sunspeck came about and a bit more information about your founding influences?
Erin Mahan (07:36) Absolutely. we’ve been creating standards for 15 years and the founding influences, like I said, was kind of a wake up call from the energy sector collapse after the Enron scandals. so dozens of energy solar companies went bankrupt and they left behind orphan systems. So Tom Tansey, our founder, was working with companies
and early inverter makers who recognized that the solar industry needed this shared foundation. Something like a USB for solar, a plug and play communication protocol. So Tom Tansey and other technologists created Sunspec Alliance to address this gap. And so to describe Sunspec in simple terms, it comes from this historical moment. We are an open standards and testing organization.
for the solar and DER industry. We define protocols like SunSpec Modbus Common Smart Inverter Profile for California under California Rule 21 that make the solar components interoperable. We certify products, lead working groups and support cybersecurity best practices.
So you can kind of think of us as the standards body that ensures every PV inverter, battery, and gateway speaks the same language. Without that, systems can’t scale. And more importantly, they can’t remain safe. So I like to use this analogy of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. When you see that certified logo on your headphones, you expect them to pair seamlessly with your phone. So we are doing the same for energy devices.
Vikram Kumar (09:00) Mm-hmm.
Fantastic and before we go further into interoperability, you made an interesting remark there which some of our listeners will find potentially controversial. you I would like to ask you more about that and please correct me if I have a misunderstanding. You said 100 % DER integration, I guess as you referred to that earlier, that means distributed energy resources integration. What do you exactly mean by 100 %?
De-I integration safely? you mean the whole power could come from solar and wind? Do you have a bit more context on that for us?
Erin Mahan (09:37) Well,
that’s yeah, that would be the ideal world. The idea is that we want to make sure that as much DER integration as possible is safe and is secure. So maybe 100 % is not realistic. However, ⁓ it is possible.
Vikram Kumar (09:55) Perfect, that is our aim at the end of the day, but this is a reality we face on a daily basis. I’ve been working in utility scale solar, ground and rooftops for almost 13 years now, full time. It’s an argument we come across quite often, especially with respect to curtailment and grid applications. So it is the challenge of our time. And now moving on to ⁓ part two of our discussion.
interoperability and why it matters, are you able to go into that a bit more in detail, especially with respect to the economic cost, what do you mean by that economic cost of non-interoperable systems?
Erin Mahan (10:27) Sure, yeah.
Yeah, echoing your curtailment comment, if a DER management system sends a curtailment command, for example, reduce your output by 30%, we need to know that the inverter will respond reliably. And that’s what we verify. Without that reliability, grid operators are flying blind. standardization reduces engineering variability.
which cuts CapEx and OpEx capital expenses and operating expenses. So for financial institutions, it lowers the risk profile of projects. With SunSpec certification, you know that your product meets a globally recognized safety and interoperability baseline, and this reduces insurance premiums and boosts long-term asset value. So our executive director, Dylan, says,
bad standards increase project risk. And of course, I agree with that. ⁓ So the economic cost of non-interoperable systems goes pretty deep. I’ll start at the top ⁓ about the inverter functions. So by having advanced inverter functions, you’re keeping the system operating within optimal bounds, which will increase the lifetime of the devices in that system. So like on a battery,
something as simple as cycling the power. You don’t ever fully charge your battery. You only go to 80 % full. You don’t ever fully discharge your battery. You only go to 20 % discharge. If you keep it within bounds for this optimal lifespan, that’s an aspect of cost savings. Another aspect with interoperability is that it ensures you can plug in something new. So like if one of the original vendors goes out of business or the regulations change,
Interoperability reduces equipment replacement costs and it also steadies the financial model of the system over time. A really good way to illustrate this point is anybody over a certain age will recall that in the early days of the internet, if you wanted to get internet at your house, you have to schedule a three hour window where a technician could come out and set up your network.
Vikram Kumar (12:38) Mm-hmm.
Erin Mahan (12:39) These
days, when you want to get internet, you just go to the store, you get some equipment, you go home and plug it in. And that is the direct result of standardization. So that’s where interoperability is pushing us towards that place where the cost and difficulty of technical sophistication required to put a system together is all going down. Another example is that
Enabling the same product to be used in multiple geographies also limits the proliferation of ⁓ SKUs. So standardization allows the same product to serve multiple geographies, reducing the need for localized product lines. That of course helps new market entry and standards make this a lot easier. You know, just a couple of years ago, EPRI
EPRI produced an ecosystem study looking at Sunspec supporting SKUs in the market and found tens of thousands. So that is a huge penetration rate and that was already a couple of years ago. So knowing that our work supports new market entry, grid operators, regulators and utilities that need to find reliable products is great. And also further on ⁓ capital and operating expenses,
All of that electrical and safety testing is quite expensive. It introduces delays into project timelines and it has a major impact on the bottom line for releasing new products. So having standardized communication interfaces allows you to cut down the testing time by using automation. And that’s important both at the individual manufacturing company level to keep their costs down and also the time getting to market.
but also industry-wide. It means that a system integrator, system designer has more options to pick from and more products become more available more quickly. And that obviously has an effect on the cost for end users of all kinds.
Vikram Kumar (14:28) Fantastic. In the industry, think it’s a worldwide famous term now, it’s called the solar coaster, play on word on roller coaster, because the industry has faced a boom and bust cycle for the last 15 years or so, because in the early days, it was very much a cottage industry, a bit of fun. Then suddenly massive feed-in tariffs and we had a boom and then anti-dumping duties and we had a bust and…
Erin Mahan (14:35) Mm-hmm.
Vikram Kumar (14:53) Now we are in the middle of an energy war and there is two terawatts of solar installed worldwide. Just in the UK there’s about 17 gigawatts. And many of the early manufacturers and companies did go bankrupt. now investors have a challenge on how they repower these assets when the manufacturers may no longer exist on existing projects. At the same time, there is new solar going in with new technologies that are completely brand new and may not have been tested as a complete system.
Erin Mahan (15:00) amazing.
Vikram Kumar (15:19) So are you able to tell us how the SunSpec compliance framework works and what kind of market addresses considering now Solr is probably a two trillion plus market worldwide? How do you differentiate between existing projects and new ones for example?
Erin Mahan (15:32) Sure. So ⁓ on the compliance framework, SunSpec ensures the grid compliance of hardware. So for example, inverters that meet UK settings or rapid shutdown devices that meet UK safety regulations. And when I say inverters that meet UK settings, I am talking about G98 and G99 settings mostly. And these are all parts of the interoperability puzzle.
So I know that ⁓ on your podcast, you have talked to a lot of people that value hardware that is grid smart and compliant by design because it reduces friction with regulators and network operators. ⁓ grid integration is really important because without standards, grid integration requires custom engineering. So standards reduce both the engineering burden and the time delay.
of course, improving ROI timelines. And also there’s that concept of bankability linked to standards compliance. this is really standards are concrete advice for industry players to avoid connector failures. For example, ⁓ improving these MC4 compatible connectors or training installers is a big part of that. For example, in 2022,
A commercial rooftop system in Texas failed to shut down properly during a fire and investigators found that the shutdown device had been installed ⁓ had been installed correctly, but the receiver modules were different. They were from a different vendor and they didn’t recognize the signal. So they had no SunSpec certification, no interoperability. The building suffered two million in damages and the installer faced liability suits.
So this is the risk when you allow proprietary lock-in without third party validation. So Sunspec and our certification programs and our standards and specifications, they ensure that systems are going to work together in the field and not just in the lab. We’re really not just preventing ⁓ risk ⁓ in grid compliance, but we’re also creating a lot of market clarity.
Vikram Kumar (17:37) Do you understand correctly that Sunspec is not only an American company, that you have a focus internationally as well? Do you have activity in China to be able to back your interoperability claims and compliance frameworks?
Erin Mahan (17:51) Yeah, so Sunspec is a global organization. I think people really get it wrong when they think Sunspec is a US market entry vehicle. We are a global market entry vehicle. 30 % of our members, that is the people who are creating standards and working together with us in work groups to proliferate those standards. 30 % of our members are from Europe, 30 % from China.
and the rest from the United States and Australia. So we have in India, of course, as well, we have a really wide group of people working together. And as far as working in China goes, we want to enable Chinese manufacturers to continue to do business. We want to enable everyone to continue to do business.
We treat all of our members the same regardless of nationality. And what I mean by that is we hold everyone to the same standard. That isn’t uniquely about ⁓ risks from one country or another. All countries ⁓ will require third party validation.
Vikram Kumar (18:54) Fantastic. And then there’s the big question about Huawei. They’ve got a fantastic reputation in the UK, in Europe and worldwide generally because they make really good products. And it was a huge disruption to the industry when they had to stop supporting us because of the disagreements they might have had in the US or Canada. So that takes us nicely to the cyber security segment, blackout risk and the next digital threats to the grid.
What are your views about Sunspec Cyber Security Standards and IEC 62443 alignment?
Erin Mahan (19:27) the stakes are nothing short of systemic for cybersecurity. So as DERs, distributed energy resources, grow in number, they form a new digital attack surface. So every inverter, battery controller, and gateway becomes this potential access point to the grid.
And if those entry points aren’t protected, they can be exploited to disrupt voltage stability or hijack firmware or coordinate these cascading failures. And it kind of sounds like science fiction, but it’s very real. Another book that I like on the topic of energy is Mark Ellsberg’s Blackout. ⁓
It talks about what could happen if malicious actors coordinated a power system takedown using compromised devices. So in his novel, utilities fail across Europe. ⁓ And what makes it terrifying is how plausible it is. And in fact, parts of that scenario have already played out just on a smaller scale. So we’ve introduced cybersecurity certification for Modbus implementations.
And we are developing profiles that actually go beyond IEC 62443 requirements. Now that IEC 62443, is the standard that will be important in Europe in 2027 when the cyber security, the Cyber Resiliency Act comes down. There are other standards that are coming down this August, like the radio equipment directive, RED. and that has to do…
more with that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth security. Sunspec always stays ahead of the game. And that has to do, of course, with the people who participate in our work groups. We have industry leaders at the highest level coming together to discuss cybersecurity. So we help manufacturers document threat surfaces, implement controls, and verify that their devices behave securely under both normal and abnormal conditions.
as far as our cybersecurity standards and alignment, there are certain types of attacks where they just compromise people’s personal information or they lock people out of a system until they get paid. that’s like a ransom attack and they’re not actually attacking the grid itself. But that’s not the type of cybersecurity attack that SunSpec interoperability is addressing.
We’re actually addressing the ability to have many PV systems on the grid and keep the grid itself safe, up and running and active. our cybersecurity standards are evolving along with Europe and United States and UK regulations. For example, we are securing Modbus over TLS in our upcoming device interface work group that will start again this summer.
that helps protect systems from rogue control signals or firmware injections. In fact, a recent Solar Power Europe study found that 45 % of global solar capacity is vulnerable to cyber attack. Sunspec is helping future-proof this infrastructure. Another modern concern is cybersecurity for solar and battery systems. As PV sites and EV chargers become IoT-connected assets, we need to protect them.
Sunspec works on cybersecurity requirements from the IEC 62443, those European industrial standards for security, to prevent malicious actors from hacking into inverter controls that could pose safety and financial risks. So cyber secure DERs or devices that have authentication, encryption, and resilience,
That is our forward-looking priority in cybersecurity. It’s a pretty technical topic, but it has a super clear business angle. Basically, insurers and grid operators are starting to ask how secure their energy assets are. So being proactive is definitely going to confer a competitive advantage to anyone who is certified. Again, third-party verification is the most important thing that we can do for the industry.
Vikram Kumar (23:28) We’re facing a massive challenge in this area because I can’t comment too much about the defence industry or military sensitivities or so on because I can absolutely understand why they may have concerns and as energy prices have skyrocketed and there’s been massive crippling inflation.
actually affecting industrial production in the West and the viability of many businesses across all market segments, with retail airports and so on. And there’s also net zero targets to decarbonize, so there is a pressure on government and private organizations to install solar. And here, even innocently, we have tremendous friends in China and even colleagues in the UK and Europe that work for really good Chinese businesses.
And the reality you have is you need to be connected to the internet to be able to send the data back to China to be able to monitor and to maintain your assets regardless. your work is really quite important because if we’re really being honest, China is installing three or four times the volume of the nearest countries such as the United States. they’ve got the critical mass in equipment and production and the price and the support.
and even the quality now. And so we are facing a real problem on some projects where ⁓ Chinese inverters might not be allowed. we need to somehow find consensus in this area because it does affect the viability of deploying new projects.
Erin Mahan (24:58) Absolutely, third party validation is essential to that. earlier you mentioned Huawei and the problems that come up with that. ⁓ Sunspec Alliance won’t comment on any specific organization, but it does appear that running remote software updates, ⁓ they will not be allowed. And I do anticipate that services will be created for third party verification.
prior to pushing remote software updates. So yeah, basically I would anticipate ⁓ there will be commercial solutions that enable Chinese manufacturers to continue to do business. Along those lines, of course, the new security regulations that cover remote updates will allow European and American companies to continue using not only Chinese products, but each other’s products. I would say that every nation has an interest to protect their own grids.
and I could see a future where every remote software update has to be checked by a third party, ⁓ that any remote update coming from another country. So I anticipate that services will arise for third party verification before remote updates. Remote updates from other countries won’t be allowed and this will become the norm for all countries, not just China.
Vikram Kumar (26:16) And I did have a brief browse around your website and your equipment list. The impression I had was a lot of the inverters seemed to be targeted at smaller commercial installations. Do you have plans for a utility scale to add the larger inverters to your approved database list, which gives us the cybersecurity assurance and bankability to go forward with those inverters?
Erin Mahan (26:40) ⁓ Yeah, so the products that are currently certified ⁓ represent what we’ve worked on in the past. like I said, ⁓ cybersecurity work and our Modbus work is advancing. So this will allow a whole new range of manufacturers to come get certified. So we work with companies across the value chain. ⁓
I’d say number one, these are our stakeholders, government organizations, that is regulators, utilities, universities, and then software providers for monitoring virtual power plants. Our standards typically get applied at the device level, aggregators, BESS, battery energy storage systems, ⁓ BESS controllers, inverter manufacturers, VPP providers.
⁓ Sunspec standards can be applied on equipment used in any size of system and also at the utility scale, all the way down to like plug in solar scale. So, Sunspec standards have been in the past most commonly used in commercial residential behind the meter applications. But in the future, of course, because of this grid interoperability problem that we are talking about with our stakeholders,
I think that we will ⁓ expand, or rather, I think that utility scale will be asking us more questions and requiring more certifications as well.
Vikram Kumar (28:16) So this is really an exciting cross-domain area because we now in the UK have nationally significant infrastructure projects. think projects of 50 megawatts have to go through central government. There may be changes where they might try to increase the threshold. But if new inverter manufacturers from China or any other country want to be listed for utility scale to prove that they are bankable, that they meet the security requirements for software and so on.
How do they get in touch with you? How do they start the process of enrolling and getting the products listed under the Sunspec Alliance?
Erin Mahan (28:51) if the UK would like to get a product certified, for example, they can contact the SunSpec Alliance.
we have our website is sunspec.org and there you can find a list of all of our certified projects. You can also find a good example of what certification means and how important it is. So do visit the website, reach out membership at sunspec.org. you’ll reach me, Erin. and we can start a conversation about how to get certified and how to get your product listed on our website.
our product certification registry is accessed by people around the world. And of course, not just engineers who need to integrate systems, but also regulators. That would be a good point to get started with. Otherwise, products that need to be certified, well, they also need to comply. ⁓ engineers need to look at our specifications, read them, and join the Alliance early.
We say that because when you join the SunSpec Alliance, you have access to one-to-one engineering support. That’s invaluable. You have access to our ecosystem, so talking to others, talking to leaders in the market. You have access to the SunSpec dashboard, which is an incredible software. We do license this software, so…
⁓ It’s $1,000 per license, or you could join the SunSpec Alliance for $5,000 annually and have unlimited licenses. this is more technical. This is a discovery software which makes following specifications much easier. We also have a support AI tool, which sounds pretty common, but in fact, it’s amazing. And that’s because it is gated to only SunSpec documents and
IEEE documents, so that’s the American Electrical Standards Body. And this makes reading specifications much easier. You can query the SunSpec AI tool. We also have the SunSpec Academy. So if a UK company is looking to get certified and they are feeling somewhat new to standards, new to third-party certification, our SunSpec Academy is accredited.
by the University of San Diego, and it is taught by industry leaders who, for example, Tom Tansey, who founded the Sunspec Alliance, who go into the details about what things are important, why they’re important, and what’s going to happen in the future. So I would say come explore the website and talk to me.
Vikram Kumar (31:15) I want to elaborate a little bit more about the UK because it’s a market. I’ve worked on two and a half gigawatts of solar farms on even a lot of rooftops and EV charging and battery storage projects. the UK, it’s a small market, but it’s an important market. We have quite a well established grid. there’s a 50 gigawatt pipeline for the next nine years in solar.
So that’s not small by any length of the imagination because 50 gigawatts means $50 billion. the UK is an extremely financially advanced market where there are established processes. one in three of every dollar might go through the city of London. interchangeable with Wall Street. You’ve got Wall Street or you’ve got the city, which specifically means London.
Erin Mahan (31:45) Yes.
Vikram Kumar (31:57) In the past, the project development rights for a solar farm with a grid connection, with land agreements, with the designs that are buildable are referred to as RTB, ready to build. And once you reach that stage, you can have a very lucrative position where your project rights in the past could sell for 200,000 pounds per megawatt peak. individual projects could be now 500 megawatts. Of course, the larger projects will not sell for as much. The situation you face now in the UK is,
the European inverter manufacturers might be very small or might not have the capacity. The module industry has been decimated and it is going to be very much Chinese led. So if you have new Chinese equipment, like for example, Sungrow listed, it does have an impact because if they don’t pass due diligence, the developers simply won’t get the funding to build their projects, which means the target will not be met. this is what I meant with respect to the UK.
major manufacturers in China, listed in the SunSpec Alliance, or if you’ve got even new manufacturers listed for utility scale, that could be a very exciting common ground for you in the UK.
Erin Mahan (33:03) The UK is an exciting market, particularly for the reasons you mentioned. We are working with UK distributors, EPCs and DSO affiliated developers to build demand for certified and interoperable devices. once you have enough market side pull, policy will often follow. So that is our approach and that’s been our approach
in other markets that working with industry leadership will create an opportunity for policy. The UK is really at this turning point Post-Brexit, the regulatory landscape diverged from continental Europe. So for example, you now have in-roof cable standards unique to the UK, those G98 and G99 settings that have to do with grid code adaptations.
and different fire safety ratings that are an offshoot from European standards, but with these UK domestic nuances. So we’re building kind of beachheads with credible commercial players. So installers who are tired of coding custom APIs. And then we bring in the test labs, compliance partners, and pilot projects together to discuss these things. That’s how we broke into Germany.
And that’s how we started working with Denmark and Poland as well. And that’s how we intend to help the UK streamline and de-risk its huge DER transition. For example, the Cyber Resilience Act and ⁓ NIS 2, both cybersecurity regulations have major impacts for the UK. Why? Because any UK manufactured or distributed product
sold into the EU must comply. Of course, we’re helping members align with these regulations pretty early. And like I mentioned, third party verification for devices coming from outside of the UK is also a huge focus. So we’re really future-proofing this financial market.
the UK has a history of technical leadership. And we think that the UK companies in the UK should talk with us to shape the next chapter of the UK’s digital energy systems. And this means participating in our work groups. Companies from the UK can also come to the InterSolar North America show.
ISNA, I-E-S-N-A, SunSpec Alliance will be hosting a Plugfest on a stage there. So come see devices, come see interoperability in real time, look at these pilot deployments and what’s actually possible there.
Vikram Kumar (35:29) One thing I can say to you is in the UK the utilities are highly respected, especially the grid companies. outside of Switzerland and Germany, the city of London has a very stable grid and the Industrial Revolution started in the UK and so we have a very, very advanced utility culture within the distribution network operators and the transmission operators. The national grid also exists in the US but they are probably
more comprehensive it could be a two-way street. the gravity we follow because the utilities are so highly regarded, we have to follow the utility standards such as G99. The equipment has to be listed on the Energy Networks Association. And so for you to change any standards, you normally have to win a tender, which can take several years with the power grid companies directly.
I noted earlier from our previous conversations that you’re very active in Denmark, you mentioned Danfoss in the past I think, and also Poland. So what is your more specific view on fragmentation across European markets in the UK and the grid standards? You are finding, I guess, success in Poland.
Erin Mahan (36:35) Absolutely, the UK has a strong legacy. It’s a total bellwether in utility culture and grid sophistication. And SunSpec Alliance talks about that pretty often. I’ve heard that this stems from early investment in SCADA systems.
the super robust DSO hierarchy, and also some of these super early moves to deregulate the retail electricity markets in the 1990s, something that America still struggles with. what makes the UK really unique is that super strong grid fundamental combination. So voltage stability, frequency response and dispatch.
a very well-funded appetite for technical compliance and risk management. the UK faces now this paradox, like you were saying about fragmented supply chains that lack unified signaling protocols or safeguards. And that’s where SunSpec plays a transformative role. We’ve really bridged the gap between high compliance expectations in the UK and a scattered technology base.
I just attended InterSolar in Munich and learned a little bit more about fragmentation across European countries and grid standards. One main issue is protocol variation. Now this is a lot of acronyms, but there’s like,
BACnet, Dolly, LMS, which is actually a model in chain two. So Europe suffers from fragmented standards and ⁓ our industry leaders that I spoke with at Intrasolar in Munich, they suffer from it as well. They want to bring things together. So for example, Germany uses full digital outputs, which is something Sunspec supports. Italy favors this LMS model based chain two protocol.
Sunspec’s mission is to unify this chaos. So we are aligning Sunspec Modbus with IEC frameworks and providing third party validation to combat this relatively weak self-declaration process or practice that Europe has. For example, Sunspec Modbus is embedded in over 25 % of energy management system, EMS providers in Europe.
And without these, grid operators would lack the visibility to manage inverter variability or respond to voltage anomalies in real time. in the UK, we offer a similar thing, lower integration costs, like I discussed before, higher DER orchestration capacity and ready-made compliance. we aim to…
establish relationships via utility collaboration, distributor engagement, and pilot projects to show that Sunspec certified devices deliver measurable reductions in compliance costs and risks. And this is a really compelling proposition for insurers and regulators.
Vikram Kumar (39:14) Fantastic. The UK is also one the windiest places in Europe and we have a massive wind industry and now solar is growing rapidly and this just means that we have a very large battery storage market. There’s a tremendous pipeline in batteries that’s kicking off now as well. There may be needed to unlock more grid capacity but I don’t want to talk too much about grid. could ask you about the US fragmentation as well but we will just be here forever. Let’s get on to…
Erin Mahan (39:30) Definitely.
Vikram Kumar (39:40) the topic which was the happy coincidence which led us to discover Sunspec using AI no less. And this is fire safety and rapid shutdown. Do you want to introduce the topic and give us a background please?
Erin Mahan (39:56) Absolutely. ⁓ Fire safety and rapid shutdown is obviously fundamental. ⁓ When you install PV panels on a rooftop, you are mounting a live DC electrical system above a family or a school or a business or, for example, in Bristol recently, a hospital. These systems can often operate at 600 volts or more. And when compromised ⁓ by fire or cable damage or installation error,
they pose crazy risks. So fire safety is not just a checkbox. It’s about protecting lives and infrastructure in worst case conditions. So that’s where rapid shutdown comes in. ⁓ So you can imagine in the United States, we have this big red button and that’s our rapid shutdown button. And it’s next to the solar inverter.
In the event of an emergency, pushing that button sends a signal to module level or string level devices on the roof. And then they de-energize the panels, ⁓ either completely or to well below 30 volts within a very short timeframe. And that saves the lives of firefighters when they’re stepping onto a live roof. ⁓ So the beginning of rapid shutdown ⁓ came with the NEC, the National Electric Code in America ⁓ in 2017.
So ⁓ in 2017, the National Electric Code mandated that rooftop PV systems have the ability to quickly depower and that limits the risk of ⁓ electrocution. So if you have string or micro inverters, that red button might be located inside the junction box. So rapid shutdown isn’t about fire prevention. That’s where
⁓ Some other partners come in like JA Solar or Studer Cables who are working on fire safety ⁓ on cabling insulation and circuit breakers and stuff like that. But rapid shutdown allows firemen to safely do their job. ⁓ The problem is is that when you want to bring a new system ⁓ up and running, ⁓ you eliminate the circuit breaker, then you have to have somebody go out and physically flip back every circuit breaker.
And that’s where rapid shutdown standard is a superior technology because you can depower the system to a safe level and then quickly bring it back online after the event occurs.
Vikram Kumar (42:27) From my perspective, a lot of people ⁓ mislabel solar as a simple modular technology, but is ⁓ electricity generating asset as soon as there’s light, there’s electricity, and the hazards are actually more severe than AC electricity because it’s not a regulated area. I’m not going to mention the names of the engineers because people make their livelihood out of this industry.
But I’ve been told more than on a few occasions that there isn’t a of uniform standard that marries the different components together to have a complete system. And here, you can have massive transformer failures and utility scale or rooftop fires because you may have the emergency stop button or you may have DC isolators, but the regulation themselves are very confused.
with respect to what is actually needed for compliance. example, in Australia, one of the largest causes of fire is the DC isolator switches because ⁓ people forget how dangerous DC is. Unlike AC electricity, which is fluctuating 50 times per second, or in the United States at 60 Hertz, in DC, once the sun’s on, the DC’s on, and it doesn’t turn off. It’s almost like a welding torch.
And if you have any circuit break, it creates an immediate fire. So it’s an area that’s very interesting for us. there are an enormous amount of people out there that are skeptical about power optimizers and rapid shutdown devices purely because they feel they may add to the fire risk. So what can you say to those people to comfort them that we’re doing things the right way and not trying to sell a product to them that may cause an issue in the future?
Erin Mahan (44:22) ⁓ Sure. So I would say that ⁓ the biggest challenges to fire risk of solar panels are environmental heat, humidity, electromagnetic interference. Devices must operate reliably when exposed to sun, rain and thermal cycling. cables, they expand and contract. Connectors corrode. There’s ⁓
transmission issues as well. So if signaling fails in those conditions, shutdown fails. And that’s why Sunspec tests for EMI resilience. We test for thermal drift and signal degradation over time. So this is simulating real-world fire conditions. And we test if the device behaves consistently after 500 cycles of heating and cooling. Can I hear a signal?
⁓ Can it hear a signal with rooftop noise at 10 decibels over baseline? These are really specific details ⁓ that matter for fire safety and make rapid shutdown such an important standard.
Vikram Kumar (45:33) I don’t want to dwell too much on the case of the fire risk because anyone that Googles it will find hundreds of examples and we want to stay positive and in all honesty a lot of dodgy solas gone in the UK in the last couple of years so without us saying anything the pull will come from the fire investigators, the insurance authorities, the asset owners who might have highly prized assets and now have a potential fire risk.
Erin Mahan (45:40) Yes, unfortunately.
Vikram Kumar (46:00) Sometimes in hard to reach places you might have the know emergency off switch or inverter shutdown functions But the DC remains live and if it’s on a rooftop you might not see the fire until it’s too late very often so building trust with the industry is very important because it is it is a critical area that is misunderstood and it will be very public very soon because of the The frequency of the cases of fire that will increase inevitably so
With respect to building trust, Sunspec, they are a charity. You have a commercial operation with DER security, but Sunspec themselves, this a non-profit alliance? What is your view on open standards versus proprietary standards?
Erin Mahan (46:45) Yeah, thanks for asking. So ⁓ first of all, we are not a charity, but a trade association in the United States. This is classified differently. We’re a 501 ⁓ six rather than a five or one three, which is the charity. And this means we bring ⁓ trade members together ⁓ to discuss standards. I’ll put it this way. If a utility ⁓ can’t trust a rooftop system to behave as expected, the entire value proposition of solar fails.
So people forget that solar is electricity and electricity obeys physics and not just your intentions. So we are designing systems and specifications open and royalty free to create trust in the industry and grow the industry. ⁓ So as far as ⁓ our members, they help shape these standards and we publish them totally open. Everything is free.
and they will define the next era of distributed energy systems. We are a convening platform, a standards body, and an amplifier for this excellence of engineering. ⁓ So ⁓ our reason for being is to grow the industry, ⁓ we do that by certifying products and having members. So this actually comes a lot from the lessons California has taught us.
California trusts the SunSpec Alliance to write the standards for its common smart inverter profile. SunSpec Alliance is a highly trusted, highly intelligent group of stakeholders, and they promote interoperability and higher DER penetration.
Vikram Kumar (48:27) when manufacturers develop their products, they may have no control over what size installation their products deployed on. For example, having two or three or four solar panels is a different ballgame to having a one megawatt rooftop or a 500 megawatt solar field or solar farm, as we say, in the UK. So with this respect, you have any thoughts on rapid shutdown timelines and voltage thresholds?
Erin Mahan (48:49) Yes, simply put, are increasing. or the timelines are decreasing, voltage thresholds are increasing. And the reason for that is we are ⁓ redeveloping the rapid shutdown standard to go from the modular level to the string level. And we’re working with our partners on their concerns in those areas. For example, Sandia National Laboratories spoke at the InterSolar Conference in Munich about wildfire risk. Now this isn’t…
directly related to fire risk, but it is part of the conversation. by convening experts, we’re going to make sure that high voltage also has a fire safety element. And as we’re moving away from modular configurations to string level configurations, we will make sure that those are secure.
Vikram Kumar (49:30) Absolutely and one of the things that I can say here from experience on doing electrical consultancy work for many years some of the electrical studies as the systems get larger are very very expensive and complicated to do such as insulation coordination studies which tell you if you wrap a shutdown device or solar panel or whatever switch you might have
can handle the system voltage it’s within. And if you have small companies that may be, know, semi-skilled labor, if they start working in larger solar installs, like one megawatt and above, you can create a dangerous situation where people may misuse equipment which might not be suitable for very large strings, for example. So we won’t dwell on that for too long because that’s, you know, people do paid consultancy work in that area. There are massive technical advisors that are hired by the bank
to oversee those kind of functions, because the industry is so rapidly, there can be a lot of blind spots that we need to address. But moving on to our final topic, the future of solar photovoltaics, which is the title of this podcast and Sunspec’s role in shaping it. What are your thoughts about market trends, AI, EVs and grid load?
Erin Mahan (50:37) insulation coordination studies are super complex. That is absolutely true. And looking forward on the future of photovoltaics, electric vehicles are increasingly important, obviously. Electric vehicles are batteries on wheels, and they can do the same grid-supporting functions that stationary batteries can have.
So SunSpec standards have been applied in the electric vehicle space through the Society of Automotive Engineers, SAE J3072. And we also are looking at home automation. So the standards for like a home automation platform that wants to connect with the local DER system, SunSpec Modbus can be used for that. We also have a 2030.5 metering profile.
So home automation hub can use that to connect directly to the meter. We’re also working ⁓ with a Belgian organization KNX home automations to apply the SunSpec Modbus models to load controls. And this is going to be another way that home automation systems can connect to it and control various loads within the home system.
We are well adopted in the EV space. We have metering profiles and Modbus for home automation, and we’re working to enable load control. Sunspec is a big player in the future of PV systems and distributed energy resources. For example, we talked a little bit about grid connection.
Our voltage variation control features in SunSpec Modbus maintain balance on the grid. So power continues to be supplied to critical infrastructure. These issues, these super contemporary 2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout, they trace these cascading failures back to a loss of solar generation and inadequate ride through. So this really underlines the need for robust insulation, robust grid forming capabilities.
And our work ensures that these systems meet FRT voltage support and cyber resilience thresholds. looking forward, I would say, yeah, like you mentioned, EVs, grid load, these are really important topics. You also mentioned AI, and we are working with a lot of software providers right now. An increasing amount of software providers are accessing SunSpec Alliance specifications.
So they can act as virtual power plants to the utilities. That’s a growing theme in America at least. And ⁓ that’s a definite future for the distributed energy resources industry.
Vikram Kumar (52:58) the Spain and Portuguese grid blackout, it’s a very fresh topic and there’s a lot of speculation out there in the industry. My personal view on this is that they may need a lot of battery storage to stabilize the frequency on the grid and so we may see an explosion in the battery storage market segment because the solar is installed now and if they can’t export their power…
the grid companies or the governments may need to pay those developers for the energy that they’ve installed that they can’t now accept and this will be a trend that’ll be seen everywhere. There is a lot of solar at wind or any distributed generation that’s not ⁓ providing constant base load. with respect to off-grid systems, do have any comments on that at all?
Erin Mahan (53:32) Absolutely.
I like what you said about these systems are being seen everywhere. You can see these systems in places like Coachella, our American off-grid festivals, then also to refugee camps or places where power is not a convenience but a lifeline. These systems are becoming increasingly important. I was just talking with some of our partners at DIFE, D-E-I-F.
the Danish company about how they are working more with BESS controllers these days. So really people are forward looking in this domain. Let me give you a few concrete examples. For example,
Victron Energy, one of our long-standing members, is pushing innovation in off-grid and remote applications. So they are integrating SunSpec protocols into mobile battery systems. Also in Europe, EcoFlow, a company that has lots of SunSpec certifications, has created the only certified balcony solar system with plug-and-play battery connectivity. So that’s a direct… And that can control all the devices in the home.
That’s what makes it special. That’s a direct application of our specifications in this huge leap forward for battery energy storage systems. Also on the topic of battery energy storage systems, we are working together with Danfoss and other leaders in this area to think about the future of off-grid systems or think about the future of storing wind.
and solar energy in a hybrid capacity. this will further stabilize our grid. This will encourage policy makers to make policies about third party standardization. Yeah, so we see a bright future when it comes to battery energy storage systems as well.
Vikram Kumar (55:17) Fantastic. Well, Erin, I’ve certainly enjoyed this conversation and I enjoyed meeting you in InterSolar in Munich. it’s inspiring to see your work rate and your enthusiasm for advancing the solar photovoltaic industry. And you come from one of the solar centric places in the United States. And there’s a lot of interchange of information that can take place that may add value to our colleagues and our customers and partners.
with respect to getting involved with the Sunspeck Alliance, do you have any pointers on how people can get in touch with you?
Erin Mahan (55:51) Yeah, thanks so much Vikram. We are really excited about innovation ⁓ in PV and DER. It’s super smart and it’s what Sunspec fosters. So to get involved with this, of course, like I mentioned, go to our website, sunspec.org, or you can email me at membership at sunspec.org. And the way that our members get involved is participation in our technical work groups.
You can also create your own work group to work on standards or specifications that are important to you. So, you know, those who write the rules ⁓ play first. you have something you care about, come to the SunSpec Alliance and talk with us about it. And we will ask our members who else wants to get involved, who else is an expert in that area. So work groups, number one, stakeholders.
even if you are not a manufacturer, should get involved in our workgroups and support the work the SunSpec Alliance is doing. We also, of course, have certain benefits for manufacturers, such as the SunSpec Dashboard software tool, the SunSpec Academy courses, our AI-powered SunSpec support tool. We have discounted prices on software tools from DER Security, our offshoot company.
we also have tools with quality logic that will help you get your projects off the ground if you’re a manufacturer. Another way you can get involved is attend some of our hackathons. We’ve had two hackathons in the Bay Area recently at Port Labs in Oakland, and they were super successful. Basically, we showed that devices certified with the SB mark, which is great for safety.
were not compatible, they were not interoperable. those certified with SunSpec were 100 % interoperable every single time. So get involved with our hackathons and show off your products. You can also come to the InterSolar North America show, ISNA, and participate in our Plugfest event. we have ecosystem marketing opportunities. So as a member of the SunSpec Alliance, you can co-host webinars with us.
And working previously for a consulting organization, I know that this is very expensive and it doesn’t necessarily put your product in front of the people you want to reach. So Sunspec Alliance membership in the grander scheme of things, it’s worth about $50,000 with all of our tools, ecosystem marketing and technical work groups, but it costs only $5,000 a year.
So if you are a stakeholder in the industry or a manufacturer, check us out and see if we can support you in growing the DER industry.
Vikram Kumar (58:20) fantastic, Erin I’ve certainly enjoyed this conversation and I will be listening back on this podcast to reflect on some of the other more detailed points and we’ll be in touch with you by offline. So thank you very much for joining us today, Erin.
Erin Mahan (58:33) Thanks Vikram, this might be the most comprehensive conversation I’ve had about solar ever and I’m happy to have it on your podcast. thanks so much. Ta, thanks, bye bye.
Vikram Kumar (58:41) You’re welcome, Erin. Thank you.
Vikram (00:02) Welcome to the future of solar photo analytics podcast. joined by my co-founder of this podcast who was our first ever guest. We’ve completed now 12 episodes plus one theme track. This is our 14th installment. Our industry led podcast is now listened to in 83 countries. 45 % of the listeners are in the UK ranking consistently high on Google. I’ll start first by
Introducing myself again. My name is Vikram. I’ve worked on over two and a half gigawatt of UK solar projects. I’ve cooperated with a Swiss company called Studa who’ve delivered to over a hundred gigawatts of projects worldwide. Matthew, would you like to start by introducing yourself?
Matthew Xenakis (00:49) Yeah, thanks very much Vikram for having me on the podcast again. It’s been a year and a lot has happened in a year. It’s been great. ⁓ My name is Matthew Zanarkis, the UK and Ireland sales manager for utility scale solar working at J Solar.
Vikram (01:07) Fantastic. And Matthew, do you want to tell us a bit about JSOLA, their footprint, their capacity, organization?
Matthew Xenakis (01:19) So J-Solar is a ⁓ massive ⁓ solar panel manufacturer, ⁓ global capacity of 100 gigawatts, ⁓ about a 15 % global market share. Install panels globally in over 165 countries. They listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. ⁓ And they’ve got over 81 billion RMB in revenue from 2023.
Vikram (01:48) Well, life is short and…
We have a tragedy to cover one of the key figures in the industry. Mr. Stuart Bradshaw Unfortunately and shockingly passed away this summer it reminds us, know that you don’t take anything for granted and and it has shock was through the industry and we try with this voluntary run podcast to uphold standards but also to remember our colleagues and partners that You know were with us in the past and unfortunately no longer with us That aside it’s been a very exciting year
very much developer driven. We will talk about the UK pipeline in a bit more detail shortly. But Matthew, how was last year for you at JSolo and personally?
Matthew Xenakis (02:32) Yeah, it’s been a very busy year, ⁓ I’m sure for everyone in the industry. ⁓ Every time you have a call with someone, it’s now customary to say how busy you are, but it’s a good thing in the industry. ⁓ And yeah, it just shows the progress that’s been made in the solar industry at the moment. There’s more conferences, ⁓ the industry’s growing, there’s ⁓ sort of people moving from different industries.
to solar which sort of shows how the industry is growing which is great to see.
Vikram (03:09) What were some of the things you said in the last podcast? You had a forecast about the industry. Would you say your expectations have been met?
Matthew Xenakis (03:17) So I think I said that we are likely to hit about two gigawatts of solar in the UK this year. I think we may fall short of that. think in 2022, we did about 1.3 gigawatts. In 2023, probably about 1.7.
it’s likely that we’ll fall just short of 2GW again ⁓ but I think in the years to come 2GW is going to start becoming 3GW and 3GW, 4GW so I think it’s going to grow quite fast.
Vikram (03:56) Fantastic and compliance is a huge topic right now and you mentioned you had compliance training earlier today. Do you want to tell us a bit about how JSOLA is making sure they’re compliant to UK and European regulations?
Matthew Xenakis (04:10) Yeah, so obviously it’s become a major topic and righty so. We’re obviously trying to ensure that we’ve got a transparent supply chain, showing the origin of all our raw materials, particularly in the polysilicon sort of side of the supply chain. You would notice now J Solus now.
marketing and ITS strategy which stands for integrated traceability system. If you flip a panel
over, you’ll see that it’s got an ITS number with sort of four numbers on the back. Each number corresponds to the factory and it shows that it’s come from a sort of customized supply chain, which sort of gives the customer a bit of confidence that the panels are ethically sourced and that, you know, J just doesn’t stand for any sort of modern slavery or anything of the sort.
Vikram (05:08) Fantastic. And now ⁓ when we first recorded our first episode with you, we were talking about a terawatt of PV global cumulative capacity being hit. I think within a year we’ve now going past two terawatts. It’s hard to imagine the figures. What is your view from generally your headquarters about the growing global deployment of PV and what kind of impacts does it have on JSOLA?
Matthew Xenakis (05:35) Yeah, mean, Solar’s really well poised in the market, being one of the larger manufacturers. They tend to be really conservative, you know, ⁓ especially in the sort of day and age with ⁓ squeezed margins for PV manufacturers. So J’s been very conservative, and they’re well poised to sort of keep expanding in this forever-growing market. I mentioned that we’ve got 100-gigawatts capacity
And that’s completely all n-type topcon and we think you know like the market’s just going to carry on improving So for example the the panels two years ago were 550 watts now We’re looking at about 630 640 watt panel, so the technology is getting better Productions increasing qualities improving
markets becoming more standardized as well, which obviously helps developers and EPCs with installs. So it’s all looking very positive in the outlook.
Vikram (06:39) Fantastic, I’ve got hair.
Some very specific notes about the UK market. I’m focusing heavily on official government data which were lagged behind. What’s really going on in the market? been an enormous developer-focused activity. We’ve been faced with numerous challenges with rising material costs, labor costs. Solar panels seem to be going in the opposite direction. But if we extrapolate the data from the Department for Net Zero and
energy security, which some of you may know previously as the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and in the early days as the Department for Energy and Climate Change. It’s the same government department, just the name’s changing. It’s the Department for Net Zero now. The UK is a very transparent country. Anyone can go have a look and download the figures, which drives transparency through the market and the sector.
One of the reasons why it makes London a financial powerhouse is the transparency.
which allows investors to have some kind of confidence despite the turbulence we’ve endured with Brexit, with COVID, with the Ukraine energy crisis and the labor shortages that have come. Some of these are ⁓ replicated through our other European countries as well. So if you look at the overall picture, there’s approximately nine and a half gigawatt of solar farms installed in the UK. If we talk only about operational assets, about one megawatt.
not looking at domestic, not looking at private wire which might not be visible behind the meter. The market started almost from nothing. been in this sector for about 20 years, 12 and a half years full time. 2011, we started only with 50 megawatts, 2012, 75 megawatts. Then that jumped to the peak in the UK at two and a half gigawatts in 2015.
Of course, in 2016, we had the B-word Brexit and the pipeline dropped to, you know, one and a half gigawatts in 2017 and almost just falling off a cliff edge in large scale at 36 megawatts in 2019 and, you know, 53 megawatts in 2021. It was a low point, but started to recover after COVID, you know, starting to go to 22 and 23 megawatts operational solar farms in 2022.
240 megawatts in 2023 and at the moment, you know, we had forecasted there was 1.6 gigawatts in construction of live solar farms at large scale. We’re forecasting only about 400 megawatts of that might go online this year. This is the official government data. Matthew, you might have a different view on that because you talk a lot earlier to some of the developers and the investors. What is your view? Do you think the figure of 370 megawatts?
By the end of this year it sounds a bit too low.
Matthew Xenakis (09:40) think it could be accurate. ⁓ Although it’s, as you mentioned, that the information sometimes lags. ⁓ Things may be built but not finished yet. Well, in the process of being built but not finished yet. ⁓ So sometimes the module shipped doesn’t equal finished build. So there’s definitely lag time there. ⁓ But there are also very clear instances of project delays.
⁓ projects haven’t been turned on yet for whatever reason. ⁓
But we do see that quite a bit in the industry at the moment where projects that were going to get built in 2022 are not even built yet. They’re still in the process of being built. So for numerous different reasons, each is each one sort of unique. But yeah, so I’m sure that data is pretty accurate. the actual finished built solar projects, that sounds about right.
Vikram (10:41) Absolutely, and to separate real projects from a lot of pipeline talk.
We saw this time last year approximately 1.6 gigawatt solar farms were in construction and it looks likely that about 25 % of that will go in operation this year. Some of the data that is lagging may not be covered in the government figures just yet. The report is quarterly so the last report will be out at the end of December. But if you apply the same logic that 25 % of solar farms may go into operation this year from the 1.6 gig in construction, now the Department for Net Zero and Energy Security
shows 2.5GW solar in construction, about 25 % of that will be approximately 600MW. So if you set a conservative forecast of large scale solar by 1MW, not considering ⁓ small rooftops and domestic, then we can conservatively forecast 600MW to go operational next year. That will be the highest number since 2018, which was 627MW.
Now if you put that into perspective, you know, only one solar farm, largest one or the second largest in construction now is Cleve Hill Solar Farm, 373 megawatts peak DC potentially. You know, I’m open to be corrected if I’m wrong, so more than 50 % of next year’s pipeline may be Cleve Hill Solar Farm. There’s Longfield, which is 400 megawatt solar, 100 megawatt battery potentially, could be another one, but there are, you know, huge…
huge labour challenges and the government target is to hit 70 GW of solar within the next 10 years or so, which means we need to be doing 5 GW per year. We’re not getting anywhere close to that. We’re approximately 90 % behind budget. So something needs to change. I will leave a link in this podcast to the pipeline data, which is all NDA compliant and public data. At the moment, in
Not considering the 200 gigawatts of grid applications, know, there’s going to be pressure now to separate the real projects from the ones that never intend to be built or can’t be financed. There’s a huge number of, I would say, almost spammy grid applications, which are highly speculative. If you separate those from the real projects that have some meat on the bone, you know, some real investment behind, then we could say approximately 26 gigawatts of solar is in advanced planning stages.
of which 6 gigawatt is about 50 megawatt size projects. If you read off some names, you’ve got a 600 megawatt project in planning now called Cotton Solar Project, Gate Burt is 531 megawatts, Sunnaker Energy Farm, Eastern West is 500 megawatts, Tillbridge is 500 megawatts, Longfield is 500 megawatts including the batteries, so perhaps that’s the grid connection, Heckington Fens another 500 megawatts, but all in all majority of this 26 gigawatts is made up of projects.
that on average 35 megawatts in size. What are your thoughts about the 26 gigawatts in pipeline and clearly not a lot of this is entering construction. So how do you call a spade a spade and identify the real prospects in the market?
Matthew Xenakis (13:59) So I think the larger projects come with more risk, obviously. ⁓ And obviously, in some communities, you don’t want fields and fields of solar panels surrounding you. So there’s more sort of hoops to jump through in order to get those consented and have the communities all agree for those things to happen. The sweet spot does seem to be around the 35 megawatt mark. ⁓ It seems to be easy.
for planning, ⁓ not as much risk and in terms of price you obviously don’t need as much upfront capital or know take on that much debt to get these solar farms built. ⁓ So I think that you will consistently see these 35 megawatt farms be built out in the next 10 years just consistently you know. ⁓
of thing and then you will get the odd cleave hill sort of project where these will get installed and yeah obviously it’s all a thing to make sure that the UK has energy security given the sort of geopolitical landscape at the moment.
Vikram (15:12) One of our early episodes was by a very popular figure in the industry. He’s a very nice guy, Mr. Clive Cosby. He was involved in the construction of the previous larger solar farm called Shortwick Solar Farm. Some other large ones called Owl’s Hatch. And he was good enough to be one of our early guests because, you know, clearly we’ve got 26 gigawatts in planning. Not a lot of us actually getting shovel ready or even in construction. And those in construction are not achieving their COD or contract on delivery when they may be generating
in the first energy when it becomes a real project and people can listen to Clive’s podcast and my motivation for convincing Clive to come on and he took a considerable risk on himself working for EDF the largest energy trader in the country. You know this is a charity led podcast so you know it’s for everyone in the industry that’s involved. I asked Clive how did you construct the largest solar farm in the past you know 72 megawatt short wig landward maybe 75 megawatt
commission potentially in 2022. There’s hardly been any action happening, you to hit our targets. know, solar may not be the magic bullet, but it’s a big part of it. And we need to do volume and we need to do it compliantly, not upsetting landowners, engaging with the community is a huge undertaking. And I asked Clive very bluntly, said, Clive, how were your team, was your team so successful before and why are we struggling now? And…
We have to reflect on the culture because obviously Brexit created a lot of uncertainty. It upset a lot of our European partners. And now there’s more uncertainty in Europe. So there’s interest again in the UK market. But there was COVID, which was a worldwide pandemic. People doing hybrid working in Delhi now they’re asking half the population to work from home because of pollution. So the world has changed. We’re not going back to where we were pre 2020. But one of the realities are
If you’ve got a 50 megawatt solar farm, it’s like having 50 million pounds in a suitcase left in a field. And if you haven’t got site managers, you haven’t got dedicated teams, but people are working in silos, you’re not going to get a delivery team effective enough to actually deliver something that has value. What are your thoughts on some of the challenges that we’re facing, and what do we need to do to drive a culture towards delivery?
Matthew Xenakis (17:31) Yeah, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. One major shortage, I think, at the moment is labor. ⁓ You know, getting good workers in, ⁓ which Brexit obviously hindered quite heavily. ⁓ There’s…
some really good UK EPCs out there and also some good European EPCs that are entering the UK market which will, I think will help accelerate the builds of these. And then you’ve got some companies that are developing and building which are both UK based ⁓ and they’re doing really well at the time being just because they develop when they’re ready and then they build when they’re ready and they’re able to get things moving at their own pace where developers looking for EPCs sometimes have to work at the
EPC space. ⁓ yeah, I think one of the major issues is skill and labour, ⁓ trying to get the right people in the right places to make sure that the solar farm gets built properly and up to the right standard ⁓ and in time.
Vikram (18:33) Fantastic. J have a strong name in the industry. I’ve been working as a self-employed ⁓ small business, part of larger manufacturers as an agent. But the reality is profit and loss. You have to hit your sales budget, you have to hit your profit and loss. And unfortunately, there seems to be uptick in redundancies amongst the financial sector now because a lot of these projects that are development heavy.
Ultimately, they need to go into construction to realize their cash flows and you know, the market is extremely volatile because You know people talk about how much does it cost to develop a solar farm? Depending who you talk to some people say it costs 10 to 20 megawatt to develop a greenfield site By the time a shovel ready is a hundred thousand pounds of megawatts Some people had said it costs two hundred thousand pounds of megawatt to get solar farms shovel ready to a stage where it’s RTB another acronym people use
ready to build. Whatever way you put it, know, development solar farm is more than modules, you know, selling at a high end at 20 pence a watt. EPC prices are fluctuating on smaller scale, it’s a lot more, probably double.
below 5 megawatt sites, large sites, some of the big EPCs and investors, not interested in anything below 20 megawatts. They want scale to justify the economies of scale. So say, for example, you develop very expensively for 20 pence a watt, you EPC very cheaply for 50 pence a watt. You’ve got 70 pence a watt to have a site that’s fully developed and in operation. Of course, there’s feed-in tariffs, there’s fluctuating energy prices. We are
in the middle of an energy war which seems to be getting worse and worse, hopefully things will stabilize but there is this big transaction where the Toucan portfolio was sold for almost £1.40 a watt. So potentially, in the best case, could be 50 % margin for doing things properly. However, the trend I’m noticing is that the EPCs come under enormous pressure. They don’t benefit from owning the asset. They’ve got, you know…
small margins, know, 8 to 20 percent, you make one mistake, know, this cost overruns, you can easily go under. What is your view on how these projects can be financed given that there is a massive exit strategy but a huge amount of risk between going shovel ready and going into operation?
Matthew Xenakis (21:05) Well…
I think there’s a lot of money that’s going into solar at the moment. ⁓ You’ve got pension funds, you’ve got private equity companies, you’ve got a whole lot of different companies that are providing finance for these solar farms. And I honestly don’t think money’s the problem because solar are showing the right returns for people that are holding the projects. I think you mentioned the Toucan portfolio got bought for one pound forty. ⁓ And yeah, there’s obviously still
⁓ money to be made in solar hence why the industry is growing so fast like we can call a spade a spade again and say that you know the the industry wouldn’t be growing unless there people were making money and it’s it’s really good obviously that it’s helping the environment which is why I hope most of us get into it but it helps the industry growing to grow where where where the money is so I think ⁓
A big part of it is also energy security. ⁓ Knowing that with the Ukraine crisis that you mentioned, that once we’ve got energy security ⁓ and we’ve built all our solar farms and everything, ⁓ solar will just keep ticking on as the sort of UK grows.
Vikram (22:20) Absolutely, the numbers are approximate, anyone can go have a look.
on the shoulders green co-acquisition of two can about approximately 513 megawatts was purchased for 700 million pounds. So my investor friends in the industry would tell us, know, they may be under more lucrative feed and tarot regimes. Now we may have CFD, which may be lower in values. But whatever the case, we need to accelerate towards solar deployment also for other renewable energies. But the focus of this podcast is the future of solar photovoltaics. This is what we are.
here to discuss and with an enormous pipeline, the reality is we’ve hit two terawatts worldwide, this almost entirely being driven by China. What is your view on that with respect to the volume that’s active in China in terms of new solar farms?
Matthew Xenakis (23:13) Well, China is the industrial hub of the world at the moment. They have the most energy demand, hence why they’re installing the most solar panels. They also produce 90 % of the world’s solar panels, so it makes sense for them to use it. They obviously also… ⁓
building out coal fire plants and everything at the moment too. ⁓ But it’s good to see that it’s going in the right way. They’re looking to peak their carbon emissions by 2030. So meaning it’s still looking to increase the carbon emissions, but by then it’s looking to to be completely kind of net zero by 2050. So with the rate that they’re going, ⁓ anything sort of possible, if you think about it, we were talking about two to three gigahertz
in the UK, they’re installing 200 gigawatts. ⁓ So it’s lucrative.
Vikram (24:12) Fantastic. China is just leaving everyone in the shadows with the volumes they are establishing, especially in the renewable energy space. is now a lot of discussions with the unions in Germany about Volkswagen potentially reducing in capacity because in China, not only in solar but also in battery storage, the prices of batteries are collapsing as well and the lithium prices may have come down by 90%. No one would have imagined these kinds of situations.
situations only a year ago and so there is a force, know, which is China has taken its net zero commitment seriously, you know, they are building coal power plants but equally installing more energy than anyone else in terms of solar, in terms of battery storage, in terms of EV they’ve got now probably the largest EV electric vehicle manufacturer and this has a knock-on effect with our relationship with China and our
colleagues in the industry, there’s now a logistical reality where there’s an oversupply of solar panels, there’s an extreme price pressure on modules, there’s of course a lot of anger because if you are a wholesaler or you know a contractor and you’ve bought in modules and the prices are dropping so enormously, what do you do? So there is a logistical reality and a lot of tension also mentioned on the PV Magazine blogs about the prices.
of solar panels as it stands. What is your, as one of the market leaders in the UK and Europe, you mentioned 100 gigawatts world, that’s huge. What is your view on the current pricing situation in modules and how should your colleagues and clients in the industry perceive that?
Matthew Xenakis (25:58) So as you mentioned, it’s supply versus demand. The whole problem stems from an oversupply of polysilicon in China. If we look back into, let’s say, beginning of 2022, the price of polysilicon was 310 RMB per kg. Now it’s sitting at 45, which is a massive decrease. And this is because there’s excess polysilicon in the market. Excess polysilicon enables more
manufacturing from other other well more players to enter the game of manufacturing ⁓ Which then sort of floods the market there’s now over supply of solar panels compared to the demand We also mentioned that people aren’t building as fast as they ⁓ were sort of expected to so this has caused a sort of global trend where where panels are in excess so rather than holding panels people are willing to sell them and
at cost price. So what this is doing is forcing the price downward. ⁓ In these sort of situations, it’s really important to just make sure that you’ve got good relationships with manufacturers ⁓ that can sort of help weather the storm. I’m sure as a cable manufacturer, you understand that too.
Vikram (27:28) Absolutely. I think the whole market is very exciting. What I’ve noticed is people that were market leaders in the past working for very big companies such as SoulCentury, Wurzel, and other similar companies. Now the market’s changed entirely. There’s been mergers and acquisition activity, and there’s been entrants of huge companies from the energy sector with EDF,
from the oil and gas sector with Total and BP and so on. And there’s also smaller investors that were development heavy but may not have the credit rating to build by themselves. So naturally they look for a large EPC, a large big conglomerate with 100 billion turnover in that region to come in and take on the construction finance risk. And you may get companies that don’t have much solar experience but look at the huge sales numbers.
they can achieve from building a solar plant. If you build a 300 megawatt solar farm, 50 pence of what? What is that, 150 million turnover? So it’s in one order. Some companies can do more than the entire business unit. But good projects do come at a cost, and this creates a lot of legal tensions. When people go into build, they realize they’ve got local tensions, community engagement still to do.
a huge logistical challenge, a 300 megawatt project can need a small container ship, a thousand shipping containers of modules, it might collapse the roads. And you know, then you got a human resource issue, you have very small teams, you have to suddenly grow 300 people teams and suddenly you realize your margin is not enough to cover the risk. And so the people who more experienced, they may not want to take on the risk themselves.
So they look for a large company to take on the risk, but we can see from the data that there are no winners if the project doesn’t achieve commercial operation. And no one wins from litigation. So in terms of the future ideal project, how do you see that taking shape?
Matthew Xenakis (29:40) I think as times…
Progressed we’ve gotten more experience in delivering solar farms and we look at the freedom tariff How big the projects were then compared to what’s getting built up now? so confidence is obviously growing in the in the larger projects and the The norm back in the day was consistent sort of five megawatt farms. We’re not talking consistent 35 megawatt farms So I think it’s just going to get it’s all about experience and that you know upskilling people it all comes
back to labour and skills I think. So the more experience we get the more ⁓ these sort of things will be achieved.
Vikram (30:24) If you look at the successes in the past, unlike many other industries, in solar you have to be lean, you have to procure directly, contract with the labour directly. One of the issues with relying on the bank of a party to get your project finance from the bank.
is that they need to then subcontract the same laborers, the same engineers, the same materials. And just the exchange rate can be more than people’s margin or the fluctuation in the metal prices or the module prices. Some of the top engineers are getting a thousand pound a day. You can’t replace them with laborers. we have to…
think about that in the past, Soul Sentry was successful is because they were managing everything almost directly. When you go through a big company, they might have a great sales team, but then the CFOs will not be happy when they’re looking at red figures.
And then the bank wants to come after them because people have got financial models and they need to deliver us a given number of megawatt hours to hit the financial models to return shareholder investment. if you’re not able to deliver in the end, if you’ve got a capex of 250 million…
Plus for a 500-megawatt single site, that’s enough to take some companies under. So one of the things I respect about JSO, and I’ve noticed this over the last 10 years or so, that they have a tremendous name in the market. You seem to have a disproportionate market share. To me, it looks like you’re talking to more than half the market if not supplying to them. So it’s no wonder that you guys are still around. You seem to have a very stable team with Alistair and Alexa, and also yourself, Matthew.
For me, from my own learning perspective and also for our colleagues in the industry, how did Jaya differentiate themselves in the market given the price situation and how do you keep such a loyal client base?
Matthew Xenakis (32:22) Yeah, so I think one big aspect of it is obviously we stay cost competitive. ⁓ It helps being vertically integrated. We manufacture everything from the ingot all the way through to the module, which helps control costs. ⁓ Alistair’s been very good at pushing the traceability side of things. ⁓ He came up with the ITS scheme with Alexa, ⁓ and that’s really helped show the market that we’re not hiding.
to sort of put ourselves out there, show that we’re transparent, show that we’re compliant. ⁓ So yeah, there’s that and then there’s the obvious aspect of ⁓ just interaction with clients and making sure that the sale is done right. ⁓ After sales support, pre-sales support. ⁓ And one thing that J.A. has done very well is they tend to be really conservative in the market.
We try to come across knowing that we can deliver ⁓ and don’t over promise that way. No one’s losing out at the end.
Vikram (33:34) Absolute trust is a huge currency because
One of the funny terms people use in the pub is braggowats. know, there’s a lot of people that, you know, do talk about huge numbers. It’s very easy to go to Google Earth and draw a red line and say, I’ve got a terawatt pipeline. But to understand the magnitude of what people saying and to separate the serious players from those that are just learning about the market, I wouldn’t say anything negative about them. I think they’re learning about the market. It takes over 20 years to make another solar century and to bring
up a team like that from scratch is not so easy. need to develop people. A lot of senior people in the industry are retiring.
You know, and now if you face the reality of hybrid working or some people completely working from home or different countries, they’re not in team environments where they get to bounce off their colleagues. And with solar, it’s a changing game. This leads us nicely to, you know, DC fire safety. You know, because if you look at Sothek Solar Farm from over 10 years ago, we were building a 250 watt J modules and 26 kilowatt string inverters.
Now some of these big national significantly infrastructure projects or NSIPs as they’re known, or even the smaller ones, which is like 9 megawatts. Mega means million, so nothing with mega is small. But 9 megawatts is considered a tiny project with respect to the, 6 gigawatt system construction that’s over 50 megawatts. Right? So now we have projects with JM and also other modules like Trina and others, Canadian, et cetera. You can have bifacial solar panels.
which are 630 watt peak, double sided modules, the Albedo’s a reflector generation, you can have 400 kilowatt string inverters. And you are working in sales now, but I remember from our previous podcasts, is that you did study engineering, electrical background if I’m not mistaken. And one of the known issues in the market is, if you’re going only on price, is that it is a power plant. You are dealing…
with a couple of solar panels can be enough to start welding with. And there is an enormous DC fire safety issue because solar panels are current limiting devices. I did cheat a bit, did feed up on this last night. Solar panels are current limiting devices. They’re not like AC sources that are fluctuating frequency that can interrupt the circuit if something goes wrong. They’re not batteries which can drain the entire capacity so you blow a fuse.
With solar panels, if the fuse rating is 20 amps and the maximum string of solar panels in series can generate, for example, 15 amps, and you have an installation failure on the modules or on the string cables or on the MC4s or anywhere in the system, if the electricity starts to leak to ground, there’s no way you can interrupt the circuit. What are your thoughts about the actual engineering side of things?
Matthew Xenakis (36:39) No, you’re 100 % correct. And that’s something that’s been highlighted in the industry more and more at the moment. We’re seeing fires on rooftops, we’re seeing fires on solar farms. I think, you as you know, and as we’ve talked about is that you got to do things properly. You got to make sure you use the right components, you got to make sure that it’s everything’s checked. part of the checks and part of the safety parts of it are
⁓ On site you really don’t want any casualties on the solar farm when things are being installed let alone five years later Five years later when no one’s on sites probably better than when the thing has been built. So Yeah, a lot of thing is about training and making sure that things are done correctly with the the right Certifications like we have to go through very rigid and fire certifications for our modules So if you’re using a module without fire certificates, then you’re
asking for trouble.
Vikram (37:40) Absolutely and people from outside the industry they may not be aware that it is a boom and bust cycle because you know I’m a big believer in a just transition you know oil and gas or energy is the largest sector in the world and if you’re changing everyone to electric vehicles to solar panels to wind turbines we have to take people forward with us because you know a badly designed solar farm may not necessarily be better.
than the oil gas asset and now we are facing an energy crisis, there were people queuing up for fuel and so you have to take people forward with you and a lot of things were done very very fast because of the changing nature of the feeding tariffs and other things and now we’re in a situation that the market is screaming out for a delivery team that is able to deliver good projects.
And so, you know, I very much respect the work that you do and now if you talk about a few more fun things, less serious topics, actually before we go on to that, there’s another thing I do want to say. When we were walking in the gold rush before Brexit, I won’t mention any specific names to keep everyone out of any controversy, but we were walking around mountain structures.
And some of the innocent questions people would ask, I’ll be one of them. Why do we need earthing on solar mante structures? You’ve got so many piles deep into the ground. It’s natural earthing. Why do we need any earthing? And the thing that’s sobering is, if you’ve got 1,500 volt strings, know, a 373 mega solar farm can have 23,000 plus strings at 1,500 volts.
You can have 26 strings landing into one string inverter. 500 amps could be the potential at 1500 volts. That can’t be interrupted. All the inverter can do is switch off if there’s insulation failure, but the string carries on generating to ground. And so for example, if you’ve got insulation failure on a connector or modules or string cable, for example, and you’re bleeding 1500 volts to one mounting rail and another mounting rails at zero potential,
and a poor worker that’s cleaning that module or installing a new load of solar panels, they can be subject to an enormous electric shock. So people should not underestimate the health of safety undertaking. Because if there is an incident, you know, it’s not going to be good for anyone. And so that’s, is a heavy part of things that we will cover offline with our engineers and our clients. But the fun part is you are a co-founder of this podcast.
probably 10 years younger than me. He gave me the idea to start this podcast and I think it’s been an enormous success. It’s been listened to in 83 countries. Our podcast now been transcribed on Apple podcasts for accessibility. So if someone wants to read the transcripts whilst listening, they can do so. Our podcast is also available on other popular platforms like Spotify and Amazon Audible. We’ve been treated almost like a ebook.
So it’s actually enormous and you know now listen to an 83 countries 45 % of listeners are in the UK This podcast is not designed to be a clickbait or some kind of marketing gimmick, but rather to deliver collaboration Within the industry to let people have a voice What has been your feedback on the podcast since you did the first episode?
Matthew Xenakis (41:13) Yeah, I think ⁓ you saw yourself short, Vikram. think it’s been fantastic and you’ve really pushed this podcast forward very well. ⁓ yeah, I think the industry loves it. It’s good to hear people’s opinions and also just to, you know, brush up on some of the information that other people have. Like, for example, you know, listening to John Davies about the quality side of modules and that sort of thing was really good to hear, despite even me being in the
the PV side of things, I definitely learned a lot from John. ⁓ And yeah, from a lot of the other guests as well. yeah, I encourage anyone that wants to come ⁓ and give some information on the podcast to come to put their hand up.
Vikram (41:58) Fantastic
and you’ve designed the logo as well so you should give yourself some credit. Artificial intelligence is another massive topic to get into and I’ll be told by a former client of mine now a good friend Mr. David Winnis who was basically to me a chief engineer at Soul Sentry you know that he can have very long drives to site visits and he finds it refreshing listening to you and other guests and reflecting on the past and you know it’s all in
Matthew Xenakis (42:02) that was sponsored by Chachi BT.
Vikram (42:27) positive spirit and because a lot of us are working remotely now, it’s a way for us to communicate with each other, to get us back working together on site, in offices, remotely as well. And so before I thank you for participating in another podcast, in a video for the first time, what are your views and what message would you give out to the people listening to this and future participants?
Matthew Xenakis (42:54) Well, future participants, looking forward to hearing what you have to say. ⁓ Hopefully we can churn out a few more podcasts this year and make it a monthly thing. ⁓ And yeah, I think the information is king. The more we can share amongst the industry, the less problems we’re going to have. We’ve talked about fire safety that might prevent some accidents happening in the future. So yeah, I think information sharing is really important in the industry, especially
with the way we’re about to see the soil industry grow.
Vikram (43:30) Fantastic and you I’ve been asked to write articles for Forbes magazine. I find it daunting how to go about it and it’s amazing how the market is changing now because grid connections are a gold rush now. It’s hard to get a good connection for people so that can sort of create a bust in the development game and now I think there’s going to be a trend for building solar farms. I’m at the moment working on a 110kV grid connection.
itself might be small but it may connect a know 90 megawatt project and there’s also an enormous space for power engineers wanting to get into the sector.
because as the feed-in tariffs are reduced and we need to have lower level of cost of electricity, need to our studies about the power studies from the solar cell all the way to high-voltage grid. If you might have, for example, Syracuse is solar farm, your grid is only, connections only 10 megawatts with a 50 megawatt hour battery with Mr. Michael Vasek as a grid serve, he could solve, he connect a 20 megawatt project with a 50 megawatt hour battery. That is real.
genius thinking in my book because some people didn’t want to build a project because the grid connection is too small and now with the dropping battery projects we can unlock new grid capacity, we can work with different voltages and also there is an enormous aspect that’s gone missing with SoulCentury not building projects anymore which is you know working on product development which makes the whole system work. So I’m very much excited for the next year ahead.
Do you have any forward-looking statements, any forecasts for us to look forward to?
Matthew Xenakis (45:12) Maybe we underachieved this year reaching 2 gigawatts, but I think next year we should push for 3 gigawatts, maybe even 4.
Vikram (45:22) Fantastic and the positive is the market share for JSOL is very high. So that’s a testament to you and thank you for joining another episode. Thanks, Matthew.
Matthew Xenakis (45:31) Thanks very much for having me Vikram.
Vikram (00:02) Welcome to the Future of Solar Photovoltaics podcast. My name is Vikram Kumar of Ventus K with Connectivity. Today I have the absolute pleasure of hosting Mr. Valerio Polizzi, an Italian engineer. I’ve known him for probably 11 years, first meeting in Bluefield. Valerio, welcome.
Valerio Pelizzi (00:22) Thank you Vikram for inviting me. I’m very delighted to be here and talking to you today.
Vikram (00:28) Fantastic and following the theme from previous podcasts, we’ve done about 12 episodes so far that we listened to in 73 countries, over 500 cities, over half the listeners are in the UK. So keeping with the same theme, would you like to introduce yourself, mention a bit about your early life and paint a color about your education background and so on? Because we feel it builds a strong bond with people in the industry to instill an air of transparency.
Valerio Pelizzi (00:58) Yeah, sure. was born in Rome and grew up there. So I did all my ⁓ studies there. I graduated in electrical engineering back there and I was actually working for power distribution in the persistence. And then I came into the solar industry literally by chance because one of my best friends started a company doing renewable energy systems.
And he was telling me, look, I just founded a company that is around you. I say, how come? He say, because we are doing renewable energy systems. So we want to create clean energy for the future. So you are an electrical engineer, you have to be with me. And so I started really. My only experience in renewables at that time was my final dissertation for my MSc in Rome, which was.
how to create energy, electricity really from biomasses in the CCT cycles. And then I started back in 2008.
Vikram (02:10) Fantastic. Well, Lerion, I you from a British capacity as a Londoner. I don’t ask too much about your background, but you are from Rome, you know, it’s a historic place. Are you able to tell us a bit about how it was like growing up there? You’ve mentioned you were a fanatic Roma fan.
Valerio Pelizzi (02:28) Yes, absolutely. Growing up in Rome is ⁓ breathing history, Because it’s called the eternal city because you can find from any age in the history, can find evidences, is ⁓ remains, relics, or buildings, whatever. it’s something that you just know.
It’s something, it’s sort of like it’s born with you, you know, from the very young age. And it was fine in a way, you know, we have this school as a very important part of my childhood and every Italian child really. We study a lot. The difference to here that I can see with my son is that we had
Homeworks every day, including the weekend. So this is much different from here. We had a different approach. The mornings at school and the afternoon at home. So time for studying and time for having fun. Really.
Vikram (03:44) So you spent quite a long time in the University of Roma studying electrical engineering. It’s quite interesting because there are not many electrical engineers in the solar photovoltaic industry. For me, I find that very surprising because essentially we’re doing electrical engineering, power engineering projects.
Valerio Pelizzi (04:03) That’s absolutely true. I spent 10 years because I had a break of about 3 years during the ⁓ course of the university. for personal reasons. It took me a little bit more than expected anyway, 7 years for a 5 years degree, which is a sort of ⁓ normal for almost everyone.
I don’t see most of, none of my colleagues actually finished in five years time because the final dissertation especially it can take from six months to a year time to do it because ⁓ it’s a proper study in the sense that you might do a real project, you might follow a real project so it takes some times to.
to observe, to study and then to put in writing. ⁓ that’s one of the reasons why it takes for most of the people more than five years. And I was no exception. Probably I was a little bit also, I can say lazy. I can tell that, I can say that. I was not a great student. I always liked more working rather than studying. ⁓
Then throughout my career, I studied a lot for new technologies, new things. I was always keen to understand them and try to apply them while it was just on books. For me was like, ⁓ I have to do them. And that’s it. answering to the second part of your question, yes, technically we are doing, we are creating electrical energy.
So we are generating electrical energy and it’s very funny that there few electrical engineers doing that. Especially in Italy, most of the electrical engineers, they stay in the power distribution or power generation normally. So working mostly with TSOs, with the TSO or with the National Grid Operator or DNOs really.
Vikram (06:22) TSO’s transmission systems operate like National Grid in the UK. In Italy you will have Turner.
Valerio Pelizzi (06:25) Yes, correct.
It’s Terna, yes. Terna SBA, which is no longer a national company even if it is owned by, I think, 90 % from one of the departments of government.
Vikram (06:43) Right, do they have any connection with NL?
Valerio Pelizzi (06:47) LL, which is now Edistribuzione, is a pure DNO actually. It was a state-owned company, but ⁓ Therna is, let’s say, above Edistribuzione. Edistribuzione is more like local. They are in most parts of Italy, not in all the parts. There are also other DNOs.
Vikram (07:07) And going back to your personal background and motivation, what aspects of your childhood or environment influenced your decision to become an engineer?
Valerio Pelizzi (07:17) That is a great question. Because to be honest, I was of something different from my parents, from all the other, my cousins and stuff, because I was the only one really, I wouldn’t say obsessed with building things, but I like it very, very much. I started with the, also with start small electrical stuff and the final decision. So I was always…
I always wanted to be an engineer. The final decision to be an electrical engineer started when I was in middle school because we started to study electromagnetism and we did a very easy circuit with a battery powering a light bulb. And that was really the final decision. I want to work in that field. And then in the high school,
⁓ the equivalent of the A levels here, I studied in physics, electromagnetism as well, even if in Italy you don’t choose the subjects, you keep doing all the subjects until the end. And that was my decision really. I want to be an electrical engineer, building…
Everything. I I didn’t know at the time if being like on the generation side, distribution side, but the decision was like, I want to be in that field.
Vikram (08:51) Well, I’ve spent my life so far in cable almost 20 years.
over 12 and a half years in my own business and I’ve seen projects where you’ll have only 50 meters of cable for a variable frequency drive and you’ll have a team of 10 electrical engineers discuss about the details. So a small project, lots of technical focus. In solar we can have a 400 megawatt project and sometimes not have a single electrical engineer apart from the grid connection. And so then we can’t say we’re surprised when you have 40 or 50 transformers fail on a single solar farm.
And so the way I tried to friendship myself is I try to work with chartered electrical engineers Because I’m a sales guy, know, you shouldn’t believe what I say anyway But working a cable on my life, you know, I see a value for good good engineers how you can reduce cost in a competent kind of way and So I think we spoke offline a bit about charred engineers and not charred engineers in the UK and in Italy You did a proper degree for five years
electrical engineering degree and would you say you’re a chartered engineer in Italy?
Valerio Pelizzi (10:00) Yes, I am, even if it’s slightly different because in Italy you have to pass a state exam where basically you got your qualification as ⁓ a charter engineer. So I did and actually I did also for every sector. So in Italy the engineering board divided into three main sectors. One is IT, one is civil and the other one is industrial and I passed for all the three.
So, and I did quite a while ago now, it’s 14 years ago. And yeah, it’s basically, it’s the equivalent of being a charter engineer in the UK.
Vikram (10:42) rights and do you carry insurance if people want to approach you to develop projects in Italy? ⁓
Valerio Pelizzi (10:46) Normally
you did, but I personally am not having it now, just for one reason. Because in Italy when you do any kind of project you have three levels of design. The preliminary one, which normally you started for getting some planning approval. Then you have the ⁓ definitive one, which is the one where you set up the equipment and everything, you make the preliminary electrical calculations.
And then there is the third level, which is the executive one, when you line basically right down the whole project with all the calculation, you choose the equipment and everything, so it’s ready to go in construction. And normally when you are doing executive design, you will have insurance because you have legal responsibility, so you are accountable for what you…
what you designed. Exactly. You are always accountable for what you designed, but being in the definitive design, what I’m doing mostly is I have to ⁓ be in compliance with all the regulations and make sure that I apply the right regulation and standards to my calculations. So basically the risk is practically zero because in any case, before going into construction, you should have another engineer or yourself as well.
doing the executive design and basically review everything that’s been done ⁓ and do a little bit more detailed calculations.
Vikram (12:18) I’ve got here on our notes to talk about solar but before we get more deeply into that can you describe your experience working on your final dissertation electrical energy generated by biomass in CGT cycles?
Valerio Pelizzi (12:34) It was funny. This is the word I would use. Because when my professor really proposed me, I would say, how is that possible? mean, why don’t we try to do these things? And even if was already, it was already the time where I actually I was still, I was already working in the renewable energy system because I started before my graduation.
But was funny coming from directly from the professor and from the electrical engineering department because this is something probably I shouldn’t say but I will say anyway. ⁓ Electrical engineers, especially at the beginning, were looking at renewables like doing the very easy stuff because there were not a lot of difficult calculations and stuff, especially for
for solar because you don’t have a lot of problems with frequency, with harmonics, even if now we have, actually. But they were all focused on managing grids. So all the nodes with software predicting the power fluxes, this kind of stuff. they were really, okay, renewables. Okay, this is an easy task, you can do it. Something like, I’m a big professor.
probably I will do the grid design rather than a small renewable energy system. So that’s why I was a little bit surprised. It was funny. It was funny because actually I built up my experience not only on solar and solar thermal, which I was working at that time, but also like in steam systems, biomass systems.
cogeneration because really what my dissertation was was really cogeneration and most importantly I started working on three generation which is the kind of system where you have ⁓ turbine so you can you get generates you know electrical energy but you use the heat dissipated by the turbine to
heat water or using in your heating systems but you can use on the reverse system like the
to do ⁓ cool hair, so like the air conditioning as well. And those systems are, to be honest with you, I thought there would be, there would have been the future, but I didn’t see a lot of systems like that. In my experience, at least in Italy, where they know the air conditioning is becoming really important, especially with the climate change now.
is a typical system is like having solar PV for your electrical design and then having heating system and cooling system, two different systems, not just in the same with a code generator or a three generator.
Vikram (15:57) We forget in England how important air conditioning is in warmer climates and know my father says you know England is like air conditioning compared to Delhi so
Valerio Pelizzi (16:08) It will come, I think it will come, unfortunately. Meaning that if we can fight climate change properly, if the authorities finally recognize that they’re doing something practical about that, probably we will not, but I’m a little bit skeptical about that.
Vikram (16:26) It is frightening the climate change because for me to see the change in England, how much rain we’ve had this year is unprecedented. But sticking to some of the priority topics, why did you not become a Chartered Engineer in the UK?
Valerio Pelizzi (16:43) Well, because when I moved here, I was already into operations, the operations side of renewable systems. So, and I really didn’t see the need of being a charter engineer. To be honest with you, at the beginning, I thought about that and I ⁓ tried to get some information how to get that to be recognized. It would have been fine with me becoming an engineer, but at that time I was more, was really a manager rather than a proper engineer.
So I say, did do this will ⁓ benefit my career now? Say, no, really. ⁓ sort of, you I didn’t think ever about that.
Vikram (17:27) Why I focused on the chart engineers so much, especially electrical engineers, is because I’ve ⁓ worked on over two and a half gigawatts of projects in this country. I’ve done some abroad as well. And the projects that run like a disaster against the projects that run smoothly, I found that the more money you spend on development in specifying a project correctly,
the lower cost your capex and the less headaches you have during grid connection and commissioning because things work.
Valerio Pelizzi (17:59) And also less OPEX, which is not really, know, still relevant.
Vikram (18:05) And the nature of the industry is because since Brexit, know, lots of changes and a of EPCs disappeared from the market, there’s been a glut of too many people doing development. There’s far more developers than there are EPCs. And often when they sell these sites, a proper investor takes the site.
they put down, let’s say 20 % down deposit and then they need to raise 80 % project finance from a major corporate finance bank, a loyage bank or whoever. And because the project finance is based on milestone payments, once the design is wrong, you are stuck.
Valerio Pelizzi (18:47) Yeah, you are suck and you have to redo it again properly.
Vikram (18:50) You
can’t really do it even because you’re worried you lose your project finance and everyone’s committed and the lawyers are involved and nobody wins from that kind of situation and so where I try to do things differently is to try to do things correct from the beginning.
Valerio Pelizzi (19:06) Which should be the way, right approach really. This is something that, know, I’m a developer myself now at the moment. I’m developing here in the UK and in Italy. And, you know, I have some colleagues, especially in the past, now it’s changing a bit. They were doing like, let’s do like preliminary design like this and then we’ll ask for stuff. say, always like, why? Why I have to do?
twice the job. Because at the end of the day, if you do something like just to get some approval, some planning permission and so on, okay, you got it. Fine. Then you have to change completely the design, maybe, especially I’m talking about the electrical design rather than, for example, the number of panels. But you have to change the design because then you have to do some preliminary real preliminary calculation for the grid connection. So
Vikram (19:37) Yep.
Valerio Pelizzi (20:04) why on earth you want to do your design twice? So I always start basically directly from day one with definitive design, which means that it’s a real project that can work as it is. So the only way is that it’s not going to be built in that way.
It’s just because of the availability of equipment. Because you start designing with some equipment and maybe the fund of the new owner, the EPCs have framework agreement with another company, so they need to change your design. But what I’m trying to do always when designing a system is something that is real. an EPC can take that design and just build it up.
Vikram (20:52) Right and would you consider becoming a child in this country if we wanted to come to you for signing of projects?
Valerio Pelizzi (21:00) That is something that I’m thinking of. It depends really on what the future… ⁓ what is expecting me in the future. It’s definitely something that I don’t discard right away. It can become something. Not at the moment, because I’m pretty busy in developing ⁓ projects, but it is definitely something I will think of.
Vikram (21:28) was a young guy when I started in this market and now I’m over middle-aged.
The market moves very much in cycles. So in the beginning you have a domestic boom, you have a commercial PV boom, you have a development boom. Eventually you saturate development and then you need to move into EPC. And we need to do 50 gigawatts in the next 10 years or so. And at the moment the market can’t support even 500 to 1000 megawatts a year. And now we are in a strange new reality with artificial intelligence because a lot of the investors are not electrical engineers.
is but now you’ve got these tools that you can use you know you shouldn’t use AI for proper engineering but just to have conversation educated conversations you know we had customers wanted to connect one and a half megawatts to microgrid not appreciating how much power it really is one and a half megawatt PV doesn’t sound like a lot then I was asking chat GPT how much power do you need to move a train it’s about one and a half megawatts something like that so people don’t appreciate what they are plugging in
Valerio Pelizzi (22:34) Exactly. is real true. This is interesting. mentioned the AI. mean, it’s interesting how it will develop in a sense that people are worried, there will be the AI. We will not have any more people doing the job. Okay. So if something goes wrong, who is accountable for that? A machine?
Vikram (22:59) was accountable.
Valerio Pelizzi (23:00) Exactly,
first of all. the point is, we need to embrace the future and the new developments in technology because they will definitely help you out. was yesterday, well not yesterday, during the bank call the weekend, I was in the Peak District and I was in a village that there is the Tramway Museum and I saw the project of the trains at the beginning all done on paper.
While now we have AutoCAD, we have personal computer, we basically do the same job, I don’t know, 10, 100 times quicker. Meaning that the tools are fundamental, they are crucial because they can really help you out in designing a well-designed project. The main point is you or the people have to guide them because tools themselves
they don’t know if they’re doing right or wrong. They just do what you ask for. even with the AI, it’s important who has the question to the AI to make the right answer.
Vikram (24:12) The AI is not reliable, can tell you that it makes elementary mathematical errors. But for me, when I’m working in sales and I just want to paint a picture about something, it’s good to have a flavor. But then this is why I asked about chart engineers, because when it gets serious, then I’m going to chart engineers. One, work with Steve McFaddy and he’s developing cable engineering software specifically for solar, can be used for electrical engineering in general as well. He says don’t use AI as well.
Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. So now we move on to how you got into solar. After you did your degree, you started with… Is it Andhu or Undhu Adinathya?
Valerio Pelizzi (24:48) Yeah.
Well, if you talk with Italian people, they will say UNDO ad Unanza, but actually was really UNDO because the idea behind the company was to undo the normal approach to energy, to refresh it in a different way. That’s why the company was focused on renewable energy systems, which at that time was solar PV, solar thermal, a little bit of micro wind ⁓ and code generation. ⁓
And there where I built up all my, most of my technical knowledge at the time around the renewable energy systems. And what I added to the company was the ⁓ grid connection part of it, because we started from residential, then it will become CNI, commercial industrial, and then just when I basically I was leaving, we were doing some utility scale. At that time in Italy,
It was under a megawatt because there was a special tariff for those projects with what is called the minimum guaranteed prices from the grid for exporting on top of the incentives. it was a very exciting time of my life because I basically, I started completely a new thing that I never studied before.
Vikram (26:17) you’re saying on a LinkedIn profile that you actually did some grand mom PV projects all the way back in 2009 where solar was very much a foreign concept in the
Valerio Pelizzi (26:27) Yes,
most of most in Italy, mostly they were doing in the South Italy clearly. And there were some in Tuscany. We were one of the few people that did something in around Rome really, because there wasn’t at that time not not much of ⁓ of PV there.
There were some Spanish companies, which I cannot mention clearly, they did few 5 megawatt sites at the time, I think some 10 megawatts as well. There was a big one actually, probably 20 or 30, just going by memory, so I might be mistaken. But really few compared to other countries like Sicily or Puglia, where there were massive development of PV.
U3D scale, baby.
Vikram (27:23) So you went in ⁓ this first job as a project engineer for two years and two months and you had a couple of gigs in between and then you were at Vector Quattro and then moving on to Ofgem in the UK. What led you to move to the UK? When did the first idea come in your mind?
Valerio Pelizzi (27:44) ⁓
This is a very interesting question. ⁓ Mainly my move in here was ⁓ work related. I really wanted to explore new things, try to learn as much as I could and also have the chance to build up my career. In Italy at that time I was a little bit ⁓ closed, was a closed way. Especially because there were not a lot of… ⁓
Italian developers at the time because most of the utility scale projects were done by ⁓ foreigners. Spanish companies, German companies, British companies as well because when I was in Vector Quattro actually we were managing some assets from a British company and that was the reason really why I moved.
I decided to move into Vector 4, as in the asset management, into into operations because in 2011 there was like a disaster in a very short-sighted minister of the Italian government that basically shut down all the incentive schemes.
And so basically he destroyed completely the only industry that was growing and doing business in Italy at that time. There was already a sort of recession in Italy and the only real industry that they were doing, they were creating jobs, they were doing great, was the renewable energy ones and it just simply destroyed it. So I say, okay, fine. no new developments probably.
because the costs at that time were still quite high without incentives. So I needed to jump into operations. And that’s I moved to Vector 4 in Milan. then with the idea anyway to move something, the Italian borders were a little bit too tight to me. I I want to see something different. I want to see what is the industry in Europe and globally really. And so I moved. And funny enough,
I was, I tried to apply for jobs, public jobs in Italy. I was never called for interview. Actually I was working, I passed the first stage interview at the GSC. Basically at that time was the ⁓ manager of the Italian electrical systems. So, you know, what better than an electrical engineer to work there?
I was never called for the second and final interview to say, okay, fine, it’s time to move. And here, I started here with a very broken English, probably I still have a broken English, but at that time it was even ⁓ worse. And I was hired by Ofgem, so a public government agency. And I had the chance to keep developing my knowledge not on Solar PV.
but on the heating systems, so solar thermal, steam, biomass, all those different ⁓ things. And also it was very important because it gave me the perspective from the government side of ⁓ incentive schemes, so generally how to see the ⁓ renewable energy systems. Started for Kintas Energy.
and the Spanish company, which at that time, he had a quite decent portfolio of asset management already. then, know, now they boomed like one of the top company for asset management in the UK, probably the number one, I guess. But yeah, I the chance to basically to see the, to touch
with my hands what was the solar industry in the UK because with them I managed at that time the biggest portfolio in the UK. I was the portfolio manager for a fund, that’s kind of name here, now, but at that time it was the biggest portfolio in the UK. They had a mix of very big utility scales, different technology, meaning that also thin film, couple of projects with them.
It was interesting and definitely something that ⁓ opened my views and my knowledge about how to do things differently.
Vikram (32:29) you
always with myself, my mind wanders in so many different directions, especially during the lockdown. I was working almost every single day. Sometimes there wasn’t any work to do. So just read random history books or listen to audio books and you are Roman and you know, I think in science is this thing called standing on the shoulders of giants or in your case, you know, maybe there are ghosts from the past, you know, because Julius Caesar had involvement in London and you know, reading on Chajibti, Emperor Claudius.
is established about a century later so you know these are just random thoughts that cross my mind and at the same time I was when you were in your first solar job as a project engineer I was working honeywell to training people to jump from wind turbines
as a product manager for safety at height and were chasing London array offshore wind farm which was supposed to be over 1 gig but I think this stopped the construction maybe just over 600 megawatts because of some issues with migratory birds and now it’s interesting because the substation for Cleve Hill is also nearby as well the biggest solar project in construction in the country now almost 400 megawatts but I remember that period between 2010-2012 quite well because
you know here we are with offshore wind which is running very slowly and then solar is growing massively which convinced me to start my own business and to get into solar with Leone in Switzerland but also my eye on the Italian market I think there was a year then where Italy may have done 10 gigawatts out of the blue from almost nothing
Valerio Pelizzi (34:02) Well, I don’t think that much honestly, but yeah, it was a boom really because that actually I ⁓ can add something about, know, that minister shut down the incentive schemes is that because the schemes weren’t thought properly. Meaning that ⁓ basically the…
The tariff that the last tariff, you know, the last year was from 200 kilowatts onwards Meaning that if you do if you at the time we were doing like 250 side project you were doing a decent return but if you were doing like 10 megawatts with that tariff basically you
payback return was like two or three years. And then for the rest of 17 years, you were getting a lot of money. And that was the boom, where basically everyone was building up. And in my experience, I saw a lot of very bad projects because they didn’t care. They were earning so much money, even the performances of those plants were really poor.
They didn’t care. As long as they didn’t suffer any force or something like that, basically to stop the production, they were happy because they were earning tons of money. And that was one of the main reasons of the boom in Italy. Clearly being in southern Europe with a high level of radiation helped a lot as well compared to other countries, but there are a few factors that contributed to this boom.
And I think they started in Spain slightly earlier, 2007 and 2008, then 9, 10 Italy, and then 11, 12, 13 maybe in the UK. I consider that the boom here in the UK lasted until 2016, roughly, when they shut down the last rock scheme.
there were, you for those years there were a lot of construction going on, a lot of EPCs coming from Greece, Spain, Italy as well, they were the countries with the most experience in solar at the time. Germany, sorry not to forget Germany as well, because even if they are much more focused on residential and CNI rather than utility scale, they clearly build up a lot of knowledge and experience in solar.
Those were the, I think, probably 90 % of EPCs and companies doing solar in the UK were from those countries.
Vikram (36:49) I have to say your English is fantastic and you’re adding to the dynamism of London because through you we can be active in Italy because you’re fluent in Italian and you’re speaking fantastic English and you’re in the solar industry. I’m a businessman you see, so you see only opportunities and you’ve had a very interesting exposure because you’ve seen what
Valerio Pelizzi (37:03) You are too kind.
Vikram (37:15) you bad policies can do to the industry, a boom and bust cycle. I remember being at the Valencian embassy and about retroactive duties in Spain and they all coming to this industry because there wasn’t much competence. then for yourself after Ofgem and you also had a stint at Quintas, very charismatic Dutch electrical engineer, Arnold Claren, he’s he’s there at the moment. He’s done a podcast with us. But you speak in the notes about your achievements
where you you constructed maybe over 130 megawatts split into 20 projects over 18 months. Was that with Canadian Solar?
Valerio Pelizzi (37:54) was with Canadian Solar. That was one of the most amazing experiences in my life. We were literally a bunch of people hired to do something that the company itself really didn’t know the real extent because Canadian Solar is a module manufacturer. Then they had in mind because of their experience in Canada doing already O ⁓ okay, we want to build up the energy division.
meaning that providing all the services from development up to O really. So, and we were the first team globally to do that, doing ⁓ development, EPCs, asset management and O And I was hired because of my experience clearly for the asset management and a little bit of O I didn’t have really done much at that time, just for more project in.
my experiences in Italy, but I was the only guy in the team, not I was the only guy, generally speaking. And it was an amazing team, amazing professionals. I learned a lot because we, would say apart from myself, we were a team of top class professional. ⁓ mean, if you think of building, not only developing, but building in 18 months,
130 megawatts from scratch is a massive achievement. And it was a great team because everyone was doing everything, a little bit of everything because the development guys were engineers that were doing also bit of construction. They had insight from construction as well. They had insight from me as well, from my own experience.
You know, thinking a little bit further than just, need to build, I need the last two years for the guarantees and then that’s it. You know, we were building something more, you know, long sighted, I would say, with the idea of keeping those assets, basically. So they want the assets to work properly, you know, not spending a lot of money because they were bad projects. And then again, it was a…
an amazing experience, amazing people. I was happy to go to the office. It was hard work because we were working long hours most of the days, but still it was rewarding because nice people and then we achieved basically. I remember ⁓ probably on one project we did sort of miracle because we did, thanks also with the…
the EPC team and the subcontractors we had at the time, we did five megawatts in just one month. It was great. was something that ⁓ clearly you have to be, you need a little bit of luck as well. Good weather, good materials, no delay in procurement, this kind of stuff, but still, that was like the gem of the portfolio in terms of quality and…
speed of the construction. It was a great experience. I learned a lot and actually was the first time I moved into management, proper management, because my role there was not only providing my knowledge and building up and looking after assets, but was also building up the procedures, the idea of the company itself for what concerned asset management and O
Clearly I was adapting the O procedures from Canada to Europe, specifically UK. But still I was bringing the European approach, I would say, into something that was done in North America, really, was different. And again, it was the same, probably even more for asset management because they didn’t have really a clue of the whole, not total clue, but…
they were only looking after the technical aspects because they weren’t involved into the financial management of an asset before. So we did for the first time for Canadian Solar, which is now rebranded as Recurrent Energy because already in my time they acquired Recurrent Energy to basically lead the energy division globally, but it was ⁓ a two-way…
discussion and brainstorming because they were doing only for US, actually at the time, mainly only for California really. ⁓ don’t think they were doing, talking about recurrent, I don’t think they were doing any projects outside California at the time. But anyway, so it was brainstorming, trying to build up the global culture for asset management and ONM. So I’m very proud of what we achieved.
very proud to have worked with a great professional.
I always have good memories about that.
Vikram (43:17) I remember your face being all over the media in this time and hoping one day I will get to meet with you and I remember also with my clients of the time, know, 50 megawatt projects getting built in six weeks. To me, you know, as an Indian immigrant, London is the beating heart of Europe and the biggest own goal, I know it’s controversial, but it’s fact is the biggest own goal we could have ever scored was to, was the Brexit referendum. We’re coming up to almost eight years and you know, we’ve gone from building 50 megawatt
solar farms in six weeks to…
I mean catastrophic labor shortages, lots of people were alienated by Brexit and you know moved to different countries and I think that’s taken something away from us. All at the same time when the US is doing very well in green energy they have massive schemes which is taking the gravity away. China’s growing crazily. They’ve got the biggest electric car manufacturer, they’ve installed hundreds of gigawatts of PV. India’s the largest growing economy in the world and now we have a fragmented Europe with
war going on in Ukraine with political division all over the place and I think that only adds to the economic chaos which we hope we can move away from but one of the big names of the time was Bluefield because it’s a footsie 250 London Stock ⁓ Exchange listed solar fund alongside Forsyte and NextEnergy and you know when you’re young and you start business you want to work in the stock exchange and you were very much the face of Bluefield for me at the time. I would speak about
⁓ How you got to Bluefield? Why did you leave Canadian and and what was your time like there for a year and five minutes? Five months, sorry
Valerio Pelizzi (44:58) Yeah, it was like I was shocked at the beginning because as you see I was looking at BlueFeed like you know one of the best company to work for they were doing great they were the first company to launch a fund into the London exchange so it was like you know it was a target and then ⁓ I wasn’t really thinking about leaving Canadian Solar we were actually expanding because
I was, we were opening different countries markets, so Italy, Spain, Israel as well. So we were planning to grow. So from the UK, basically our team, even it was the EMEA team, we were the UK team only at the beginning. When the UK was sort of settled, we started open looking after different countries and we were opening different markets.
So I wasn’t really looking to move because there was still a lot of excitement, a lot of new things, new challenges and so on. But then a friend of mine, was like we were at lunch and he was telling me, okay, why don’t you come and work with me? I’ll say, what are you telling? You’re not looking for anything. He said, how do you know? Well, you know.
Bluefield is a company that I always look if there is like an opening or something because even if I’m not thinking about moving from Canadian solar, you know, it’s a something, it’s a company that you really aspire to in a way. I say, well, you know, I can tell you something. We are creating a new company. You know that we have the investment company, the first one, the partners.
Then we had the asset management company, the services. We are now building, we are now creating, not building, creating the O &M company. Say, why don’t you come and work with us? I was like, literally shocked. Say, okay, that would be interesting. Because it would have been the first time in my life where I could have shaped a company from scratch.
giving, know, bringing my ideas, really literally forming and shaping the company on how I was thinking an O company should be. Because at that time, one of the main topics I was discussing in conferences with colleagues was trying to make a new approach to O ⁓ Because O really was always a service that was sort of
I wouldn’t say neglected, but something like, okay, we have to do it because we have to not really thinking on how to do it efficiently or properly. I remember back in 2015, I ⁓ was one of the only two people talking about predictive maintenance. Right. And the other guy was Francesco Giordani from Bluefield.
And people were looking at us like, know, show us what they are talking about. Why they have to do this kind of stuff? What does it mean? And we were the only two people, as far as I remember, that were talking about that. We were already thinking, you know, ahead. And the friend was not Francesco because at the time we were just a colleague in the industry. And then basically the opportunity was working with Francesco as a chairman.
as a CEO of the new company and building up this O company where we can put our ideas because at the end we were sharing this new view on how O should have been and we put into it. Clearly it was more like on the operational side, so building up the culture, building up the structure, the business model.
the operation themselves, what was needed, the procedures and processes, it was a big job. It was a big job. And it was exciting because, again, I had the chance to learn a lot because at that time I was working also with the finance department, which clearly they helped me out on building up the business model of the company. So I had really the sense and the touch on how
and where you can make the difference to make a business profitable. And so again, it was great. Clearly my first task was building up all the culture and the management of the company itself. So keep using ⁓ subcontractors for the actual field work. And then second part was, okay, we are ready. Now let’s bring engineers into the company. And then I start.
all the, know, health and safety procedures, tools, van, setting up everything. In the meantime, I was building my team around me anyway. We were already seven people, ⁓ clearly only the management, because the first task was to manage in time all the Bluefield portfolio first. And then that was my idea, actually.
don’t mix up too many things. So, and the second part was bringing the actual manpower in the field. we, was at that time then I decided to leave because you know, we have different views on how to go, not really different views on how to go ahead, but by my, my…
balance between work and life was a little bit distressed at the time because I was splitting my time between Bristol and London and I was living in London, it was quite hard, I had a ⁓ small child at the time, I was missing a lot of moments and I really, ⁓ because of my family, ⁓ let’s say management, we couldn’t move to Bristol so I decided it was time for me to leave.
I didn’t hide all the manpower we needed, but I basically laid out the plan for the future. So, from now on, it’s just a matter of keep going in this direction, because clearly we didn’t onboard the whole portfolio in once, but we did project by project, time by time, really area by area, because I built up.
different areas where you have the engineers looking after some…
some assets really. So at that time I decided to leave. It was too much stress for me and really I didn’t want to miss out too much of my life. My life is not only work. Even if I enjoyed a lot, I consider myself lucky because I do it for a job, something that I love. But still, there are other parts of my life that I would like to leave, really. ⁓
⁓ But again, was a great moment. I am proud of what we achieved. ⁓
Vikram (52:44) Well, I remember that time, Bluefield is a brand, you know, they treat their people with respect and people want to work for them, but they are in Bristol, they recently did a podcast with Mr. Rob Tippett, and there is a buzz about it.
Valerio Pelizzi (53:01) That is
one of my guys. I’m so proud he really did that career because as a leader, as a manager, you want all your employees to grow, to learn, to become more and more. So I’m proud that now he’s basically doing, he’s in my position now. ⁓
Vikram (53:18) There is like an artistry about Bristol, Bansky and all of these things but going back to your early comment about Mr Francesco Girardi I looked up to him a lot, I learnt a lot from him. It was a strange time because a lot of projects were built in a rush and some of them went legal and before the disputes were settled they started already new projects. I’ve signed more NDAs in that time, the period between 20…
2012 to 2016 than any other time in my life. I don’t even remember why I signed half the NDS for. so, Francesco, I remember visiting solar farms with him and he had tremendous amounts of knowledge. Like people putting string cables into rails with sharp edges. He, we want a few people to say, you know, we need to separate galvanically DC string copper cables from.
you know, structure which might be steel or aluminium or whatever, you know, there’s also safety concerns, so to have somebody from the fund take that level of detail. So on the one side we are too many orders, you know.
My wife ran our printer paper. There were so many orders. On the other side, the industry almost collapsed because of feed-in tariff changes, MIP, because of Brexit. And then you had this O period. And it is a stressful environment because you’re carrying the baggage from EPCs that might not exist or terms that might not be appropriate. And so the market almost pretty much died after Brexit, after the Brexit referendum. And the only company that was active from my customer base for subsidy
free in the UK other than an international project in the Netherlands and Chile was grid surf and here I came across you again until then I never heard about string optimizers I knew about module optimizers but from Bluefield you ended up in this place called Ampt are you able to tell us a bit about that your five years working on string optimizers
Valerio Pelizzi (55:22) Yeah,
absolutely. ⁓ Actually, at that time, when I left Bluefield, I was thinking about what’s next. I did some consultancy because of my experience, but I really didn’t know. ⁓ I wouldn’t say I didn’t know what to do, but sort of I was thinking what to do next. If you know what kind of ⁓ aspect of my experience I would like to push onwards. ⁓
So they came pretty strongly to me. This company say, are the right person working with us and we want you to be part of the team. want to build, to open the European market. We have a strong US market already and so on. And I was intrigued to be honest, because I’m not, ⁓ even if I’m a, consider myself a people person, meaning that, know.
I’m good in dealing with people. I’m not really a salesman. I have some skills, some say skills, but ⁓ completely honest with you, I don’t feel too comfortable being a salesman. But being with them, it was another challenge because it was not being a salesman. First of all, was selling a technology, an idea in Europe at the time, rather than an equipment, a device.
So in that specific, for this perspective, it’s not really the pure sales. It’s something slightly different. And there was the challenge to open a market for someone that for something completely new and innovative that wasn’t present in any part in Europe. It was the module ⁓ optimizers, but it was more like…
residential, CNI market rather than scale. Because, know, when we’re talking about 10s of 1000s of modules, can imagine as an electrical engineer, the first thing is imagine adding 10s of 1000 of discontinuity points. It’s like crazy from an O perspective, from an engineering perspective, it’s something like, would you take the risk? Because it involves, it might involve a lot of
O &M efforts. And then I was, these guys came and say, we have a string optimizers. So one device, maintenance free, they can improve a lot of things. And I was like, okay, this can work. The financial were satisfactory, financial, I mean, for the project, for CAPEX and so on.
And I say, that could be interesting. So we started working, I started working with them and I tried to open the market. One of the most innovative companies, as you mentioned, is Gridserv. was one of the first companies. And yeah, so we started with it also with some other major funds, Spain and UK mostly, Italy as well actually.
We were going to ⁓ solve and sort out some issues they have. As you correctly said, there were lot of bad projects when they were built in a rush. So we were more like correcting issues. So, repowering or revamping projects rather than new builds. Even if now is the time where probably it would be important to have them in a new build site.
It was great. was actually, thought I learned another perspective to even to design thinking about something that you normally don’t don’t or you weren’t used to think. There was always this, you know, discussion about what is best, is best strings or central inverters. And I’ve never been a fan of being like extremistic. It’s like
It depends on the project. It depends what you need to achieve. It depends on several factors. Not to disregard the pricing. know, CAPEX is still a very important parameter of a project. It’s basically the one that goes the green flag or not to a project. And then you you have a variety of solutions where you can build up, you can design.
sorry, you can design your assets and having the knowledge of string optimizers is one of them as well. Again, it depends. Personally, I think they had a very innovative, a great idea because basically they were moving the electronic part from the converters, so the inverters, into something different. having, it’s true that you have two devices, but you have two…
devices that are simpler. When simpler in electrical engineering means more robust and less issues. Because if you have one device trying to do everything, it’s always a mess. Because you can always have some issues normally and no, you have the same experience as me. In the O now, a lot of things go wrong. And not just because of bad design, but just because if you overuse something…
you expecting premature… ⁓
premature failures basically, or failures generally speaking. So I think that this can be something to look after the future. And especially now that we are integrating BESS into renewable energy assets, that it can be a game changer.
Vikram (1:01:25) battery, energy storage solution. One comment I want to make about Ampt and GridServe is, know, that was a period where there wasn’t a lot of construction going on in the UK and suddenly Mr. Michael Vasakis of GridServe, the CTO, phones me up and he has this amazing project. For me it’s mind-blowing how you can have the sun generating electricity but then you have also
Valerio Pelizzi (1:01:28) Yes, so.
Vikram (1:01:52) Reflected generation as well and you have back colocation of batteries There’s a nice lovely video by grid serve on YouTube on on York Solar farm and then And you know so all the learning we had from the previous eight or eight years or so we put everything into York Solar farm and still lessons because in the early days you have 250 watt modules now suddenly you got 500 600 watt modules this
Valerio Pelizzi (1:02:18) 700
even.
Vikram (1:02:19) And
so you start to have almost one kilowatt modules in certain fault conditions. How you safely manage that was a very interesting and learning and mind-blowing experience with Michael and then all of the learning from York and Hull Solar Farm was put into Siren Sister Solar Farm. We put all of this together, co-location of batteries on the same buzz bar we’re landing, you know, battery circuits as well as the solar circuits doubling the sizes of the combiner box.
And then I’ll come mention for legal reasons the names. I’ll go to established players in the UK and Europe and they’re building sites with just 10 year old designs.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:03:00) What do know?
Vikram (1:03:00) This is happening even now so this takes us nicely into the future of solar photovoltaics Because you’ve listed now that you’re a sales agent for amped So it looks like they clearly like keeping in touch with you and they trust you But you’ve also got two of your own companies in Jeb and power GSRL so as we come towards the end of our podcast We’ve got about five minutes are able to comment a bit about your two new companies What you do as a sales agent for amped and what do you think is the future of solar photovoltaics?
looking at the technology and how you can see the UK hitting 50 gigawatts in the next 10 years
Valerio Pelizzi (1:03:38) Well, Egypt is my own company, so and PowerG is not my own company. I’m the technical director for them and we are developing best MPV in Italy as a still as a different project not co-located yet and ⁓ Yeah, so that’s it ⁓
basically being back a proper electrical engineer now, a designer making electrical calculation, which I love a lot, and making sort of my own software, ⁓ what probably is to arrogant call it ⁓ software because basically it’s an Excel spreadsheet. So where I put all the calculation, try to automatize a little bit. And the future for solar PV to me is bright.
is bright because there are new technologies coming on, coming to the market, perovskite for, perovskite, don’t know the extra pronunciation for modules. So they’re always thinking something new. And as you correctly said, you know, the design of 10 years ago is not the sign we have now. Even if you use, let’s say, old approach, rather than old, I would say a conservative approach. So you…
design what you know best. The ratio when we started designing solar was like 1.1 back 15, 16 years ago. Now you go up to 1.5 even in South Italy because even equipment changed and improved. We have much more experience on everything. are really now even real numbers of what degradation is.
Because since the beginning, everyone was selling modules saying, oh, we guarantee 80 % at 25 years. But basically, now we are 25 years old modules. We know exactly if it was 80 % or more. So we have much more knowledge anyway. And based on that knowledge, we know also where the failure were mostly and where we have to improve. So I’m expecting new things.
like string optimizers, but even different approaches to things. And something that will be important in the future will be also how renewables can ease the pressure on grids, which means storage mostly, but not only storage because we have also hydrogen. And all those are just ⁓ storage of energy, but you need to generate that energy. And this can be the answer for the unpredicted
unpredictability of PV and wind. You can use storage to to level up basically and be available where needed, which is what normally is the first things that people argue against the renewable energies. We are not yet in a point where
⁓ renewables can be the only source of energy. ⁓ I don’t know if in the future we will be, I hope so, but again, we don’t know yet. But ⁓ I see a lot of interesting challenges in the future and I still see a bright future. are, with just one hard stop, which is the governments. As soon as they acknowledge
something, you know, they can actually we are here not to speak to be shark and you know, to just to make money, but clearly we are we are not working for free. Yes, for sure. Yes. But between completely ignore, you know, climate or ⁓ needs of people is something that the solar industry actually is different from other industries because you can still make a
a good money out of that, but being mindful and be aware of also needs of people, of communities, of environment as well. mean, it’s not something that are two different aspects. They are all the same. And it’s just a matter of try to find people that are not thinking about their own… ⁓
The problem is, the main problem is, they all…
⁓ cast of people, say in English, interest, know, the lobby of interest, the lobby of interest for, I don’t want to change things because I will lose my share of the market. And I still, ⁓ if the moment government or authorities in general, with a knowledge that we want to go that direction,
all those people will understand, okay, we can adapt to a different business model and we can truly embrace also renewables. There is already some companies that is doing it. There are a lot of greenwashing, to be honest with you, just for political reasons, but there are also some giants in the fossil fuel industry that are doing something.
Maybe it’s not enough, maybe it’s not that much, but still it’s a start. Every long journey starts from the first step.
Vikram (1:09:28) And ultimately we are solar farming and farming is a difficult occupation in itself. You need to look at the Punjab region in India and the air pollution that’s created from the agricultural waste that’s burned. And these farmers, are in debt. They need to, you know, generate wheat. Even there’s an oversupply in the market. So people say competition with land is actually the opposite because if you keep putting fertilizer and keep extracting all the nutrients from the soil, you damage the
water table, you damage the land, you create deserts.
Valerio Pelizzi (1:10:00) It
actually can help agriculture, especially because of the climate change. I just learned because I was speaking to a farmer, an entrepreneur, and said they are making a lot of fuss, especially in Italy, using land for solar, while, for example, I’m growing peppers. I didn’t know that. Peppers, to become yellow, orange, and red, they need a lot of hot weather.
They don’t need direct sun. So basically, for example, now at the moment, it’s illegal having, let’s say, a plant, solar PV on agricultural land, know, ground mounted. But actually, people that grow peppers need that because there will be a lot of still hot weather in Italy, but they will be shadowed. So they will grow properly instead of be burned.
This is one of the things and legislators that doesn’t know that or don’t or they pretend not to know that.
Vikram (1:11:11) So as we come towards a close because we are running out of time, there’s an infinite number of things we can talk about but there is an important…
we started which was paused for you know numerous reasons which is how to do gigawatt scale solar farms so you know this is the way in India Australia in the US we started a project together with Tyco about insulation piercing completely eliminating string cables and plugging direct and how the string optimizers can have distributed maximum power point tracking and now it’s interesting that Hawaii have run into difficulties in the European and Western markets in general which has left a massive
hole in the industry so there’s so many things we can follow up on but with respect to a message to your listeners before we close the session do you have any any last words
Valerio Pelizzi (1:12:01) Thank you for hosting me. It was a great chat. I hope the reviews will be bigger and bigger and bigger. Thank you.
Vikram (1:12:12) Absolutely will be this there’s a target of 75 terawatts worldwide so I’ll look forward to catching up with you offline and thanks so much for joining us today
Valerio Pelizzi (1:12:22) Thank you, Vikram. Thank you.
Vikram (00:02) Welcome to the future of solar photovoltaics podcast today. I have the absolute pleasure of being joined by mr. Rob Tippett of bluefield operations managing director of a footsie 250 listed solar fund and also one of the up-and-coming major contractors in the industry mr. Liam Hicks co-founder of dynamic energy solutions Our first stop is Rob. Rob, welcome. Are you able to introduce yourself and
Tell us a bit about your early life and background.
Rob Tippett (00:33) Absolutely and thanks, thanks Vikram, thanks Liam. So I’m Rob Tippett, Managing Director of Blueford Operations. We carry out the O &M services for Blueford Group, the BCIF fund. I’m not managing director of the fund itself but the operations team. We’ve got 50 personnel around the UK and in the office. I suppose to start with how I got here really, my early life and all that kind of stuff. grew up in Cornwall.
My parents had a ⁓ civil engineering company and they did environmental surveys across the UK. I spent most of my holidays, most of my breaks working for them on the survey crews. That was quite enjoyable, getting around the UK, Scotland, Ireland and places, working with older guys, very health and safety driven.
We working in confined spaces, rivers, coastal areas on the road as well, which is obviously quite a dangerous place to be. ⁓ Went to study environmental science at Plymouth University. Had a good time there. But with environmental science, you kind of find yourself a jack of all trades, mastering none. It was a good experience to have.
I knew I wanted to work outside, I knew I wanted to work in the environmental sector, but ended up back with my parents’ company. So working back on the cruise straight after university, obviously did the bit of travelling in between. Instead of doing a gap year working, I ended up doing a gap year working my way around the world, which was…
Obviously a lot more enjoyable than just sitting in a job. I feel I was also more aligned to vocational roots rather than academic. So although I enjoyed university, I wouldn’t say I was very good at it. I learned through experience. I learned through kind of seeing it and doing it. So yeah, as I said, after university,
worked back for my parents for a number of years, ended up working overseas, Belgium, Bulgaria, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Hong Kong for a while, again, all around the UK. And then my parents decided to sell the business, probably when they were about 45, was in my early 20s. I think previous to that, I thought…
there was an expectation from me that I would take the company over, but I was too young. You know, I felt I was too young. It wasn’t an option for me at that time. And I thought, well, hats off to them. They can sell up. They can go and do their thing. So they were bought out by a company called RPS. I carried on working there for another eight years or so, probably a bit longer than that. Ended up managing the operational side of the business. We had 70 staff.
mostly field service engineers. Again, health and safety heavy, you know, working in confined spaces, up to 2000 gases that can kill anybody, fatal gases in the sewer networks. Working at height, so obviously you’ve got to drop people into the sewer, you’ve got to get them out again or into the rivers and that kind of stuff. So a lot of these things working in the wastewater industry,
has really fed into how I’m able to influence how the current operations business can improve, can maintain high safety quality and delivery, but also the data as well. So the data we used to collect on those environmental surveys was very, really sensitive equipment, routinely calibrated. We would…
we would use that data to verify mathematical models and the mathematical models would be used by the big water firms, utility firms around the UK to make informed decisions on multi-million pound infrastructure improvements or flooding incidents and things like that. know, data quality was key, health and safety was key for us and quality was good. you know, we…
We had ISO 9001, 14001, 18001. I didn’t really appreciate at that time, at such a young age, the importance of those processes to go through, those steps to go through. So after a number of years working at RPS, I moved into solar. Working for a small company down in Somerset, a small little developer.
primarily focused on commercial rooftops and small commercial systems. But they had O &M on some small ground mount systems up to sort of two meg. And they did it, delivered a lot, but working for a small company, as I’m sure you’re aware, both of you, you have to wear many hats. It’s a real challenge. you know, even with good clients and customers.
It’s still a challenge, you you’ve got to adapt, you’ve got to just drop the priority at that moment to move on to another priority, which you might be moving from the finance side to the quality side to let’s get the contract or let’s go and actually put some solar panels on the roof, you know, that kind of ⁓ flying around. But that got me into solar.
Vikram (06:33) Thanks
Rob Tippett (06:39) worked there for four odd years and then moved to Bluefield, which is where I’m now. So started off as a portfolio manager, looking after the sites from the office perspective. And then I’m now managing director five years later.
Vikram (06:54) Fantastic. completely get what you mean by small companies. I run my own small business called Ventus Limited and when I was first visiting solar customers the first objection was who the hell is Ventus? happens if you go bankrupt? So I’m very grateful to the support I’ve had from my partner especially Leoni which is Tudor Cables now. But today something’s a bit special because ⁓ we’re joined by Mr. Liam Hicks as well because we are talking about re-powering an O ⁓
covering your own personal profile as well Rob because I think that’s important building transparency and trust and showing people the kind of people the kind of person you are. before we go into deeper into how you go into solar, getting into the health and safety, transformers, repowering, discussing the future of solar photovoltaics and some of our memorable experiences I would like ⁓ Liam to just spend about 30 seconds introducing himself, explaining how he knows you Rob and
what he brings to the party with respect to O and repowering.
Liam Hicks (07:58) So thank you Vikram. Liam Hicks, co-founder of Dynamic Energy Solutions. My background is working within solar for the last 10 years. Electrical contractor commercially and domestically before that. Born and bred electrical electrician, should I say. I’ve worked quite closely with Rob at Bluefield. We had a really good relationship with Bluefield from…
where I previously worked at Solar Century. ⁓
once SolarCentury disappeared, started dynamic energy solutions and we’ve had a really good relationship with Bluefields moving forward, re-powering O support services to Bluefield operations. One thing I’d like to say is Rob, I saw the inception of ⁓ Bluefield operations and you came in quite early on and what you’ve done there up to now I think is quite admirable with regards to what you guys have
been up against really and we will get deeper into that I’m sure later on in the podcast.
Vikram (09:07) Absolutely and Robbie mentioned you work for a small solar company and I’m just looking at your LinkedIn profile, I think everyone does this. So there’s a lot of people that look at your profile and don’t engage which frightens me sometimes but it’s public information so you were at this small company for just over four years and we are now in the election year, the industry has been boom and bust cycling itself as well and not helped by…
constant changes But the Tories are now saying you know in the next five years We might face more change in the industry than we’ve had in the last 30 years specifically This is net zero targets which some people question even if it’s affordable or not so ⁓ So with respect to how you got into solo I can see you started with so Southwest in 2014 only two years before the
Brexit referendum which is still the shock was for which are still being felt and I remember quite clearly in those times minimum import price cut in feed-in tariffs It was really an uncertain time. It was nothing like 2011 2012 and everything was boom and growth growth growth small companies going into 300 employee businesses. What was your memorable time from working in solar southwest?
Rob Tippett (10:29) I think within the first 12 months I came in on the back end of all the good times and within 12 months there were noises, whispers and reality from the government about what was happening with the industry and how the sport was going to tail off and I honestly was thinking what the heck have I got myself into. It was very uncertain times.
As a small little company developing small commercial systems, we rely on just the technology, but the support and the noise from the government, the messages from the government, and the messages were very negative. It put a lot of people off. I wouldn’t say the tap was turned off in terms of supply of business, but it was drastically reduced. like any other small business, we had to…
just look at what we were doing, have honest conversations about where we wanted to be. They were quite, you know, they were difficult times. know, do we focus on O Do we carry on focusing or do we focus more on domestic installs? Do we look at the commercial systems? And it all stacked up, you know, all stacked up in terms of the paybacks to customers, to the clients and potential clients. But, you know, actually making those sales.
and although I wasn’t really directly involved with many of those sales, they were hard conversations to have because people just weren’t interested. It was all about confidence and that confidence came or lack of confidence came from the government at the time. But then I think going through the ISO 9001 process really helped the business from my point of view because it really centered what we wanted to do.
you know, we had up to that point, some of us really wanted to focus on O some of us, because we had some good clients. Do we grow that portfolio or do we focus on domestic installs? Everyone knows who’ve worked in the domestic install market, it’s cutthroat and it’s by volume, you know, in rural Somerset, we’re never going to hit that volume. But it was actually having sit down and having a proper grown up conversation about, okay, what we’re going to do.
what are we doing here? And I think ISO really helped define the purpose of the business and helped us align ourselves to a goal and the target. And that’s when I really saw the value of the ISO process. But memorable things, think, past that first 12 months, 18 months of uncertainty, and then I think just enjoying the fact that I was
still working outside, still realizing that dream that I was working in an environmental setting. And I transitioned from one utility sector to another utility sector and the learning curve was massive. And I also, think being totally candid, I feel that I verified my fear of heights after going and working on those so many roofs during those.
Betty Betty years. I hate it
Vikram (13:53) I was product manager for Safety at Hype for Honeywell, Balsgate of Heights and the butt of all the jokes and…
And I appreciate completely what you mean by 90001, ISO 140001, our factory in Switzerland, they supply the railways, need to give massive indemnities, 50 million Swiss francs or 45 million pounds roughly. So there needs to be traceability. I think the Japanese believe even one small screw getting lost can lead to a train crash. So when you counterbalance that with solar, where a one-man bank can grow into a massive company, there’s none of those processes and a lot of is on private land.
don’t really even need to follow many of the regulations which you should do anyway but why I got into solar is because you know Crossrail which is the Elizabeth line a 15 billion pound project I still haven’t got my first meeting but I’ve done two and a half gigawatt solar already so in terms of career progress and progression
You know, here’s from other clients, colleagues of mine in the industry, even from Liam, if you work for a DNO, you might be waiting 10 years before you do switching or work in certain environments. It’s so like you’re thrown in the deep end from day one.
And I can see that from your progress as well. And I don’t want to talk a bit more about that because you started as an O manager at Bluefield and now you’re the Manage Director of the O ⁓ department or the O company. But one of the great things about this podcast is we can make an impact for young people, for mature people from other industries because there is a labor shortage, especially a skilled labor shortage and bringing good people in who have good ethics and want to do the right thing is very, very tough.
and we want to look at your inspiring stories like yourself and Liam and try to inspire other people and one of things you can do in these moments of pause is to reflect so I can see you had quite a technical uni background and you did even though you said you’re not very good at it you did a very relevant subject in environmental science you were to tell us a bit about what you studied and what your sort of dreams and ambitions were
what your view on climate science is in general?
Rob Tippett (16:06) Yeah, no problem. So I actually started off doing a degree in coastal management up in Scarborough. was part of the University of York. But I quickly figured out after one year, although I did very well in that first year, that I had far too much free time on my hands. And I spent most of that time.
not studying and socializing. And let’s just leave it at that. So I moved, I went down to Plymouth to actually what I thought was doing a proper degree, proper university. Although it was a proper degree, a proper university, and I did see it through, got my degree. was, I suppose what it did do is formed and confirmed my appetite for working in
the outdoors. I say that I’m office based 100 % of the time at the moment. But also working in the environment and making environmental improvements. You can see even back then there were massive red flags going up about climate change or the impact that humans are having on the climate. As I said, I did a year studying coastal management and that was quite eye opening and fascinating about
you know, how you can protect one area of the coast. But what you’re actually doing is you are saving that bit of the coast, but two miles down the coast, you’re exacerbating another issue and causing a bigger problem. massive domino effect. Absolutely. And that was playing out in almost every single subject that I was looking at or studying every single module at university at Plymouth. And it was a bit eye-opening. I suppose
You know, just talking about climate science or the climate impact that’s happening at the moment. think, you from my experience, you know, I look at all the health and safety incidents that come in from the guys on site and the office team. You know, I feel that the weather events are getting more extreme. They’re getting more severe. You know, the storms are getting, the winds are getting harder, the rain’s getting harder in small intense bursts.
flooding is getting more common. even in the heat in the summer, which obviously impacts all of our and all these things impact the solar sites, you know, we’ve got to think, the industry’s got to think about not just how we fix the current issues, the OPEC stuff, but we also got to put in place ⁓ mitigations to…
allow those sites to work and operate in those future conditions. know, we’ve got to be thinking about the mounting structures. We’ve got to be thinking about the substations and the transformers overheating or obviously not overheating. We’ve got to think about flooding. know, we’ve got to think about, look at the flood risk assessments that I’ve done at planning stage and actually maybe go one step further and put those substations maybe another couple of feet in the air or whatever it is, you know, or
you know, Liam and I have done a lot of work on, well, not me specifically, but the team with Bluefield, but doing a lot of environmental controls in substations, you know, looking at HVAC systems and looking to dry out the bases of the substations just to prevent that humidity, for instance. So yeah, it’s visceral what’s happening and you know, that…
You get an understanding when you see the incident reports coming in and it’s really important that we continue to report this stuff, but also react on it now, especially in design for new sites.
Liam Hicks (20:02) Yeah, yes, so I think you’re right there with regards to the new sites that going in, maybe a bit of future proofing for the kind of climate we’re heading for.
Vikram (20:13) Absolutely. ⁓ And moving on to now the blue field. You started off as an O manager about just over five years ago and you’ve risen to being managing director. What has been the recipe behind your success?
Rob Tippett (20:38) I don’t go as far as saying right place, right time, but it is a little bit of that. I joined rather fortuitously at a time where the business, the O &M business, the Ops business had just set up. So it’d been around since 2017, I think it was set up. I joined in 2018 in that period of time.
the operations team at Bluefield were basically looking after third party O &M’s and probably only about 100 megawatts of sites. When I joined and a colleague of mine, Ben, a couple of weeks later, we looked at it and we thought, okay, this is a challenge. We want to actually have our own engineers. We were joined about a month later by a chap called Howard Johns.
And then we ripped it all up and started again. We got our first engineer, Alex Lennon-Hannan, it probably started January 2018, sorry, 2019. And we had to build the whole business from scratch. There were no safety processes, there were no operating practices, there were no vehicles, no fleet, not even any designs of the logos or anything like that. No PPE, no tools.
literally starting from scratch. you in that time, that first sort of two years, was, you know, I think Ben and I felt that we were hanging onto the coattails of the partners and Howard with their expectations of where the business needed to be. But I suppose what we were lucky with is that we managed to find some really good staff. We managed to, we were lucky in that we’ve got a very good staff retention rate.
And those really good staff are still there in the business and they are the backbone to the business. The team we built, we didn’t want any kind of massive characters in the office team. We needed a team that would work together and collaborate and actually deliver the work that was needed. But it’s the same with the field service engineers. Masses of experience. know, I wouldn’t even like to calculate the number of centuries of the combined knowledge that they’ve got in solar.
But the ex-OEMs, ex-military, ex-Navy, they come from a variety of different sources. Ex-ONMs as well, we’ve got a lot of our competitors, especially locally around Bristol. They’ve joined Bluefield and joined the project that we’ve got going. And just having that continuation, having that team grow together and trust each other and collaborate, it’s really…
had an impact and I suppose, you how did I get from portfolio manager or whatever I was back then to managing director? I don’t know. I put my hand up, brave enough to put my hand head forward and apply for it and go for it.
Vikram (23:48) And you’ve stuck at it because there’s a lot great people that work for Bluefield. One of the principal engineers from British Solar Renewables, Hugh Murtha, who I worked with quite closely for a very short burst of time for Shotwick Solar Farm. He’s in Australia now, I believe working for BEON. There might be Subsidria Power Core, which is a sister company of UK Power Networks. A lot of people don’t know that. And he was at Bluefield for a while. Valerio, who I network with and drink with occasionally, sometimes a bit too much. He was at Bluefield.
Dr. Jyoti Roy who we’ve done a podcast with he’s you know a few doors down from where I live he was at Bluefield and of course during the early days of the gold rush a very interesting chap Mr. Francesco Gerardi who very nervously took to the factory on audits hoping not to get banned at Sorcentry or other other EBCs he was one of the few people from the funds that took an interest in the actual details
From my perspective, you’ve been one of the longest lasting individuals within Bluefield and it shows if you stick at something, it can pay dividends and you write in your personal statement, you’re managing 675 megawatts across 75 sites. Are you able to comment about what are some of your challenges on these sites and what sticks out to you?
Rob Tippett (25:15) Yeah, absolutely. Just going back to your Francesco comment, mean, Francesco is the detail, devil is in the detail for Francesco and he’s working his magic over in Italy at the moment. you know, just going about how I became MD, I suppose trust works both ways. You know, I believe in the project. I believe in the visions that the partners have got of the operations team and the whole group itself.
And they trust me to do it as well at the same time. I think it’s, we’ve mentioned trust a few times, but I think trust within the industry, with our peers, with our suppliers and everything else is so important.
It’s the bedrock of our business as well. We trust each other. I’m not asking my engineers to do time sheets. I just trust them to do the work. It’s the same with the office team. I don’t want to micromanage anybody. It’s up to them to do the work that they think is needed. And if they need help, they can ask for it. the question, going back to your question, which I’ve forgotten about, by the way.
Vikram (26:28) that you’ve lasted a very long time and ⁓ yeah just said I basically because I’ve been working in this industry for over 12 years full-time now a lot of it comes to me like flashbacks because some of these people I’ve met under very stressful circumstances good or bad there’s I mentioned as in a flash so I wanted you to comment a bit about Francesco because I see him as a friend he’s very charismatic and always spiring sometimes and so I wanted you just to mention
him for a bit, still at Bluefield of course but you’ve lasted longer than many other people that have come and gone because O is a stressful industry because you’re taking on you’re carrying the can for people that built assets in the rush under enormous pressure without proper ISO 9001 processes sometimes the panels will be on the water and the feed-in tariffs will change so lots of things that could go wrong did go wrong and
And so I just wanted to congratulate you for lasting so long and also as a hint to people listening, if you do apply yourself, you do see rewards. But my question was based around your notes, you wrote that you’re managing today 675 megawatts, out of which you may have some of the sites that even I’ve worked on with SolarCentry and with British Solar Renewables and others in the past, such as Wurzel, RF Linum, it’s a memorable site for me.
Of course I don’t speak about any confidential or any commercial secrets or anything like that. But in terms of what you deal with on a day to day basis, out of these 75 sites, what sticks out to you as your main challenges at the moment?
Rob Tippett (28:04) I think the, thanks for the reminder there, I think the issues and challenges that we face are not uncommon for the rest of the UK solar fleet and the O &M’s and the supporting businesses like Liam and Datham Supply. The rush…
10 years or so ago to build, to get these systems accredited and online and energised. You know, that was one part of the problem, one part of the issue. I think a number of other challenges are just being realised now. I think O &M’s, when you scratch the surface of some of the sites, you identify many other issues with cable sizing or…
ducting or lack of ducting, kind of Component selection at the time may have seemed like a really good idea, may have been really beneficial for the balance sheet or the financial model, but the reality is during the operational phase of the asset, it’s not, in some cases, it’s just not working. And I think that’s really important to stress. You go to trade shows and trade events,
Solar Energy UK have solar storage and then you go to Munich to ⁓ InterSolar and Barcelona for the event in January. A lot is talked about the development phases, a lot is talked about the components, but the biggest phase, operational phase on a solar asset is the O is actually looking after them, making sure they perform and generate.
the widgets that are being able to sold to sell to the PPAs in the open market. And I think more emphasis is needed industry wide about how that is going to develop and how that is going to be improved. So going back to, you know, specifics, you know, we’re seeing a number of we’ve had a number of issues with HV on on on transformers. Maybe it’s poor design or poor specification.
You know, learning instances through the industry, but not just solar. We learn of other issues through, you know, maybe switch gears and safety notices through switch gears. But we, the assets that we maintain, they’re coming up to, you know, on average, probably six, seven, eight, nine years old. We’re coming to this phase in their life cycle that they do need some.
more investment and that’s happening now. We’re set up as a business to deliver the operations and the maintenance, the plan, preventative and to fix things, get things back online. As a business, we’re not set up to deliver the bigger projects and we engage with other specialists for those services, people like Dynamic, who’ve been really helpful on a number of projects over the last couple of years.
A number of the issues that have been identified, you we are addressing at the moment and there are plans to address more in the coming years. But it will, you know, there’s not a finite list of things. There’s a long list and there’s a lot to do.
Vikram (31:39) Absolutely, there’s so much to unpack and we are tight for time because to talk about last 10-12 years in one day is an impossible task and we would catch up offline as well. But a passing comment I just want to make about trust and my own experience with dealing with Bluefield and everyone else in the industry. Of course, the whole world has gone upside down since people started working from home and…
We had the energy crisis, increased interest rates and labour shortages. Some companies have a banking skill, people engineer to stay with them because people change their lifestyles completely. I’ve almost always worked from home, I have no issue with working from home. But trust is essential which is dependent on communication with your colleagues, with your suppliers, with the people that you work with.
How do you manage your team and how do you instill good communication between your sites, your colleagues and your contractors?
Rob Tippett (32:41) Yeah, it is a challenge. think what we set up during the first day of COVID and lockdown was something that we still do. We have a daily meeting with the office team just to make sure that everyone’s appraised of any activity on the sites. And obviously, as the portfolio grows and the team grows, that’s becoming quite an event every morning. But as you say, communication is absolutely key.
I am a huge advocate of face-to-face. You can solve so many more problems being together in an office or to getting together in a meeting than you can over teams or any other route. Saying that, we’ve got the technology, we have got teams. We are lucky enough to be able to work in a, certainly the office teams, the engineers will never get away with it, but in a hybrid situation, you can do a couple of days at home or you can do…
most of your time in the office or whatever suits you. But there’s nothing like getting together. Liam and Nathan have been down a couple of times. Other suppliers have been down a couple of times. We try and engage at industry events with suppliers and other contractors as well. We find it difficult and one of the other issues which I didn’t mention earlier about
issues with the industry or with the portfolio that we maintain is that a lot of those older components, older manufacturers, some of them aren’t around anymore. That’s a challenge. And I don’t think that’s unique to Bluefield. I think it’s industry wide. They’re either not around anymore or those original designs are not supported anymore. So, you you’ve got to make a decision. Are you going to keep going? Are you going to try and repair those? ⁓
at component level or inverter level or are you going to consider revamping? There’s a lot of questions. You can’t just rip things up just because the supply is not around anymore. There may be other clever solutions around. And it’s interesting. I listened to one of your podcasts with John Davies and he’s a big advocate of getting the data and understanding what the real issue is before you invest heavily on the millions of pounds scale in addressing a problem.
But those OEMs, ⁓ if they’re not supporting those technologies anymore, then what do do about it? there’s a lot of scope, but there’s a lot of potential ⁓ for new work streams for people like myself and people like Liam in helping out solving these problems.
Back to communication, think we’ve had some very difficult conversations with OEMs on the continent in recent years. Lack of support being one of them. Lead times, which is not their fault, but we get it in the neck if something’s not delivered on time or the lead time is 18 months plus. Those hangovers from COVID still exist. Those hangovers from Brexit still exist, unfortunately, in terms of supply.
I think the electrical industry is nice to think we’re in this little bubble of it’s all about solar, it’s all about keeping plants running, but the reality is we’re just part of the jigsaw puzzle. There’s the electric fleet, electrification of the fleet, electric vehicles, there’s computers, there’s mobile phones. The industry is massive and we’re just a tiny part of it.
you know, in terms of the value that those manufacturers, those chip manufacturers during COVID placed on the solar industry, it was negligible because their turnover is elsewhere. So, you we’ve got to think differently as an industry. We’ve got to look at different solutions and we’ve got to be smart about it.
Vikram (36:50) Thank you very much. I absolutely believe in climate change and climate science and it’s almost like talking about religion or what political party support but the scientists are 100 % clear we are heading for catastrophic climate change. There is urgency, there’s also national security interests, there’s issues with energy supply and security and
having some control over it and in no other industry I’ve seen progress be so fast because I worked at LAP before, worked at Honeywell before and also for software companies in the early through cable and wireless a new product would take several years in development when solar projects were executed by EPCs there was several new products in a new design all at the same time under difficult circumstances
And one of the continuity good things about working with the funds like Bluefield like with foresight in the past with honored Clarion who’s done a podcast with us as well now he’s at quintess was that is that you guys get to have a long-term view on things and one of the objections are not raised on the podcast preparation notes was you know where’d you get the budgets for proper O from
Rob Tippett (38:11) Budgets for proper O I mean, yeah, that’s one of the issues about O in the UK. Typically, if you go out to the third party market, it’s a ⁓ race to the bottom on O fees. And we’re not set up for that. To properly maintain a solar farm, you need to be there. You need to make sure that it’s running, that it’s operating properly. ⁓
And to do that, unfortunately, it costs money. So we were never going to compete with the lowest price O companies. We’re happy to work with those clients that want to maintain their assets. I mean, at the end of the day, the asset is king. The asset is what we’re all here to do, certainly in the O ⁓ sector, is to maintain and look after and maximize the availability and maximize the performance.
And I don’t think you can do that on a tiny budget. You’ve got to invest in the plants, not just at component level and future proofing the sites, but you’ve got to put the right people on there to actually make the difference.
Liam Hicks (39:25) Yeah for sure I agree. I’d like to touch on some of the O stuff in the UK and the different types of quality of build. think sort of 10 years ago was a very challenging time for solar because there was so much solar being installed and it was a massive innovation time of innovation. You had the likes of Solar Century and Bluefield building sites, Bluefield as a client, Solar Century as the EPC. ⁓
of innovation was going on at that time and there were some fantastic people working on those projects but there were other projects being installed in the UK that weren’t as innovative and a lot of stuff was installed probably not to standard well definitely not to standard we know that we know that based on what we see now. Bluefield are obviously buying a lot of new plant that they didn’t build I’m sure that’s throwing a lot of new challenges at you as
Well, because I mean, I like to shout out a few of the early asset managers Beatrice ⁓ Lopez and Paul and Aranja from Bluefields. Those guys were fantastic asset managers working with them on the Solar Century portfolio that we had for Bluefield at the time. They were very, very, very attention to detail orientated and that pushed innovation within Solar Century. And I think it was a fantastic mix. What we’re seeing now
is we’ve seen a lot of installations that didn’t have that innovation, that drive for excellence. And that’s kind of what is leading us onto the revamping, repowering side of the industry right now, which is rife just as much as the build side. With respect to your existing Bluefield owned plant and the stuff that you’re buying now, is it throwing new challenges at you or do you feel like the team that you’ve built are able
to sort of attack this and get under management and control in as an efficient way as the stuff that was built for Bluefield.
Rob Tippett (41:35) Yeah, it’s interesting point. mean, I think if you’d asked me a few years ago, you know, how can you just absorb the assets and take them on, I would have said, yeah, absolutely. But, you know, I think time and experience can sometimes…
give you a better reality of the situation. mean, I’m not going to, you know, we’re no different to any of the other portfolios or large asset owners. There’s always going to be problematic assets or groups of assets. And it’s just about how you deal with that. And I think the way that the Bluefield are not unique, but they are uniquely set up in the sense that we are
We act like an owner operator. So we’ve got good communication between the businesses, between the ops team, the technical asset management team, and the commercial team. So all the decision makers sit quite close together. So we realize we find the problem, we figure out what the problem is, and we come up with a solution, and then we deliver on it quite quickly. But as I said before, we’re not set up as an operations business to do the big.
capex works, the big revamps, the big repowers, you know, that’s, that’s big, big labor heavy, intense work streams, which we would, you know, look to our supply chain to deliver for us. But
As you say, going back to your question, it is a challenge when you do get one or two tricky sites come on because it’s like having a tricky client. You end up giving them all the attention when you’re good client.
gets the perception is they get ignored because they’re not pestering you all the time. You know, it’s the same with an asset. You know, you’ll get a pesky asset, which is always tripping or something happening and all your engineer time is spent there resolving that issue. But the good site down the road probably gets less attention, but there’s stuff building up in the background. So it’s a real balancing act, you know, but we’re looking to act on the faults and failings as soon as possible because the longer you leave it, the bigger problem you’re going to create in the end.
When we haven’t got the resource to do it, we’ll go out to market and we’ll get some operational excellence from the country, from people like Des and the others.
Liam Hicks (44:05) For sure, mean one thing I will say is credit to you I’ve worked alongside a lot of your engineers in the field and they speak very highly of you Rob and one thing I’ve found and witnessed with Bluefield is you guys do listen to the guys from the ground up and you do take on what your what these guys all with this sort of world of experience they come to and they say what what should be done and how things could be done better and I think at Bluefield
for sure your guys have all said that you take it on board and they do see stuff happening and I think in the industry it’s something that’s rare and I think it’s why Bluefield’s operations probably done so well is because you do take on that information coming from your staff and I mean the office staff all credit to them as well Ben, ⁓ Adriana, fantastic project managers for those sites and
And it really shows, you know, we’ve worked alongside you repowering quite a few sites now. Your engineers are always on site. They’re always very interested in what’s going on health and safety wise and with the actual installation. ⁓ Project managers on that side of things, repowering side of things, Sean, Carlos, great guys. Working with different companies, it’s obvious to see where the ⁓ championing of being successful as a solar plant
owner and operator. It’s so challenging. We know, we see it. We see it with everyone and we know exactly how it can be. But I think the blue field mix that you’ve got there is definitely a recipe for success because although you probably do have lot of obstacles that have to, and the hoops you have to jump through, I think it works as being the asset owner and the operator. Fantastic. And yeah, credit to you. It seems to be working.
Rob Tippett (46:01) Yeah,
thanks about this. That’s very kind. It’s nice to have that feedback. But you know, as we talked about already, I started out as an O &M manager, whatever it was, and now I’m managing director. You know, I don’t know everything. I’ve not got all the answers. You know, I look to…
the people I work for, the engineers and the office staff, I look to them for the answers and they give me the answers and what they need. And then we have discussion about it and we figure out what’s the best way forward. Every quarter we have a health and safety committee where everybody’s invited, all the engineers, they can come if they want, they don’t have to, but they’ll always have a champion from the site or from the region that will say, this isn’t working for us. It might be down to the PPE they’re wearing.
or it might be down to the tools they’re using, it might be down to a specific SOP that we’ve developed, you know, and they’ll say this isn’t working for us and we’ll take it away and we’ll rip it up or we’ll get something else and we just get something that will work for everybody and it’s just easier that way. think, you you trust your people and they’ll trust you and I think that’s, you know, that’s really valuable.
Liam Hicks (47:11) You’re only as good as your team. I know that all too well.
Vikram (47:15) So
what’s SOP?
Rob Tippett (47:17) A safe operating practice, standard operating practice, depends on the seat you’re sitting in.
Vikram (47:22) It certainly seems like you guys are professional to have health and safety meetings. used to do a thing ⁓ at Honeywell Safety College called Toolbox Talks. They were always very popular because people are so busy with everyday day-to-day life that they forget to innovate sometimes or look at what else is out there and taking a moment to reflect and review does help in driving continuous improvement.
I’m a complete solar and electrical geek myself. I work in sales, I run a small business. There’s so many topics that we don’t have the headspace for to go into like module technology. Now we have biofacial modules with reflected energy generation. We contrast that with the SADC Solar Farm which probably has 270 watt JSO modules on and now we’re working, we’re looking at 670 watt modules.
or more and there’s unknown areas like the albedo so that sort gets your nerdy juices going if you’re into that sort of stuff like I am with also string and central inverters with string optimizers there’s so many things how do you fuse successfully DC strings so there’s so many things we could go into but the thing that sobers me the most and giving credit to Ms Carmen McGovern my former finance director from Lab you know she said
is cash flow, cash is king, cash is what kills businesses. Good businesses don’t go bankrupt because they’re bad businesses, they go bankrupt because they run out of money. So cash flow is a sobering reality, staff retention as you mentioned, sobering reality, and focusing on the profit and loss is a sobering reality which is why I raised the point about Arnott saying earlier, you just need one transformer to go and your own budget could purely evaporate and this is why…
I wanted Liam to be involved with this because he’s successfully done a repowering project with you and how you get to a point where you develop the business case of repowering because in development, some sites are selling for 200,000 pounds of megawatt and they were drawn on a fag packet. And now you’ve got actual sites that you have to do real engineering, real development. How do you go from a stage where you assess the assets not performing as to expectation?
or it’s coming to the end of its life, or the parts are obsolete and you need to now re-power, and how do you spin all these plates? How do you maintain your module warranties? How do you maintain your voltages? What is the process you go through to get to a re-power for a 10 year old site?
Rob Tippett (49:56) Yeah, it’s very difficult. It’s a good question. There’s no one size fits all answer to any of that. But as you say, we’ve worked with a number of suppliers to realise some revamping projects these last 24 months. They’ve been very successful. The key drivers in those instances were fundamentally the availability of the OEM to deliver on warranty, to deliver on spares and failure rates at particular.
particular site as well. you they’re the indicators that you have at your disposal. Goes back to an earlier conversation we had a minute ago about communication. It’s flagging as early as you can the issues that you’re seeing on site. You know, the eyes and the ears from the operational perspective are the engineers and the fault events that are recorded in the control room. So, you know, if you’re getting…
20 inverters, string inverters pop in every day, then you know there’s an issue on one side. And that’s quite an easy argument to have for the NASA owner. And as I said before, the longest phase in the asset lifecycle is the operational phase. And it’s probably the least thought about during the planning. Certainly going back a few years, maybe it’s different now. I do feel like things are improving. You talk about the…
that you’re excited juices coming out with the 600 watt modules and the bifacials and the cables and all those kind of things. I see it differently. see how am I going to how am I lads going to get change that module if it weighs 50 kilos or whatever it does, you know, a string inverter which weighs, you know, a 250 ⁓ kilowatt string inverter. And I’m using a very common here.
That’s not string inverter, that’s a mini central and how are the guys going to lift that off the railing to swap that? That’s heavy machinery in use and that’s proper trackways and proper, that needs to be thought through and I wonder, and Liam and I will find out in two or three years time in a day, if it has been thought through. exciting times, more challenges.
Liam Hicks (52:14) There are a lot more operational challenges. mean just with the voltages, the difference in voltages, the string voltages now are higher than they so that comes with a whole load more health and safety aspects to it and like you said with the inverters, lifting those bits of equipment on site becomes a real issue because you need lifting equipment now. You cannot lift some of these inverters by hand.
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. The challenge is that we have coming, I mean from a design and installation point, viewpoint, it’s fantastic. Innovation again, we all love bit of innovation, but yeah, I can completely see your point and we have to think about it as contractors because we offer a lot of support services to the O &M’s.
We find that lot of that sort of work as well is subbed out because the internal teams are busy, very busy doing the operation, that day-to-day operational stuff. So something that we as a contractor, we need to think about as well.
Rob Tippett (53:19) Absolutely, it goes back to the communication bit and how we engage with the suppliers. The more diverse the conversations you have, the more answers and ideas and innovation you’re going to realise. think it’s so important to have those conversations, these conversations that we’re having now, and make these connections.
Vikram (53:39) The
truth is a very dangerous thing and ⁓ it can ⁓ rub people up the wrong way. But for me, the quiet truth on the inside, for me it’s like gold, you only gain in value. On the one side you’ve got the sobering reality of budgets and profit and loss and cash flow and sales. On the other side you have the ethical ⁓ issues as well and of course with capitalism comes greed. And it’s a lot easier to…
developer solar farm than to build one or even to maintain one because you just need to Not all developers are like this, but you just need to spam a few grid applications you get lucky You could see you you know charm the landowner you register 15 pound company you’ve got on SPV Suddenly the market picks up and you’ve got 50 of these sites and you sell them and you never take the liability of If they’re buildable no or not or if you’re to maintain them or not
And so with respect to creative juices and the excitement, it comes from a lot of scary things. Like I’m dealing with solar forms that have 1 through 2 kV connections. I’m delivering cables that are eight tons for 700 meters. 1 through 2 kV cable. The ceiling ends to connect them are 100 kilograms per connector. The 670 watt modules, they’re over two meters tall. Some of them, it’s with the packaging.
palates are 1.2 tonnes to unload. And people fall out of their chair when suddenly they don’t think about these things. Because you talk about ISO and everything, because the greed consumes the industry, there’s hundreds of gigawatts of developments, when something closes finance, people get shocked. They don’t expect it to close finance. And suddenly you’ve got 1,000, 2,000 shipping containers turning up full of palates that are 1.1 tonnes each.
And you got agency labor that don’t even have to unload them. So this is, this is what’s going to come to you, but maybe that’s just go for another podcast. But here we are talking about repowering and Liam, what are your specific thoughts about repowering? How do you, how do you get to a stage where you close business for repowering?
Liam Hicks (55:52) Well, I think
Rob Tippett (55:54) Thank
Liam Hicks (55:55) Being an electrical contractor and installer with operations and maintenance background helps because we know the challenges of forward thinking, maintenance side of things. We’re not just looking to install whatever we’re given. We do try to have some input and offer some help to our clients with regards to moving forward. this going to be easy to inspect? we connect the
hard-drawn copper to the piles. We want to have them on the site that hasn’t got a ducting in front of it because when your operational guys are out and they’re doing their inspections on a monthly basis, they need to be able to see these things easily. If they’ve got to get done on their hands and knees and these kind of things, we understand that an O budget is very tight. the quicker you can make it, the checks can be done, the better it is for the client. And identifying those things, relaying them
to the project managers and that whole communication thing we’ve been talking about and keeps coming up is so key and working closely with Bluefield ⁓ personally, we try to offer as much as we can in the way of actually installing it on site. What’s best for the site? Not so much what’s quicker, but what’s actually going forward going to be better for the operational guys because we have that experience behind us and we know what Bluefield
want, luckily, because we’ve got that history with them. We know how they like their sites to be installed, and we try to offer that up to them. Sometimes without them even realising, you know, there’s certain things that we do that we know that that’s the way they like it, and then when we do the walk around, snag lists are small, the work’s done efficiently, and it works, it just works for us.
Vikram (57:51) It seems like communications are a common denominator because whenever you’re going to do something that involves large amounts of money or big change, you naturally will have confrontation and only good teams seem to pull through. There’s almost an industry secret in the pub that it’s roughly 20p a watt for development, 50p a watt for EBC, 70p a watt to develop and build a solar farm and then it’s on the public record that sites are selling for 1.35 a watt.
You know, there might be feed-in tariff, there might be other things involved that we don’t quite understand, but to me it seems you can have 50 % margin if you very expensively develop an EPC site for 70 pence a watt, and you can sell it for 1.35 million a megawatt. If you look at the acquisition value of the Toucan portfolio by Greencourt Capital, which anyone can go up and look. So reaching that stage where you can build the relationships and the trust.
You know, I still haven’t figured that out, otherwise I’d be retired by now, but there is value in doing things properly. But as we come towards the close of our conversation, ⁓ Rob, I do want to mention some of the nicer things to do with the environment, to do with the future of solar photovoltaics. According to Shell’s Sky scenario, solar will generate twice as much energy as any other power source by 2100, which for me is unfathomable.
But you mentioned in your notes about natural capital. Are you able to comment a bit about that for us and also talk what you think will be the future of Southern Football takes?
Rob Tippett (59:26) Yeah, well, I’m no soothsayer, but so the future I think is very bright for solar. You know, this sounds very ⁓ a very common thing to say, but I think, you know, it doesn’t need government support to stand on its own anymore. It can stand up on itself commercially in the UK at utility scale, even in, you know, as we’re seeing at the moment, volatile markets. It’s still profitable business.
And I think that will continue. You know, going back to the environmental piece, you know, what we talked about earlier on, but we, when I first arrived at Bluefield, you know, I was…
The way the land was managed was very binary. You cut the grass tick, you’ve sprayed the weeds tick, you’ve cut the hedges tick. At that time, there was no thought in how it was done and how it would benefit. We’ve got some guidelines and there’s guidelines in the public domain and also attached to every single site, there is compliance, basically a list of to-dos to land management practice.
There may be certain methods that need to be employed when you’re cutting the grass. It may be directional, it might be how you’re cutting the hedges.
what typically happens is that the whole hedge is cut every year or every third year, whatever it was. But the reality was you can’t be doing that because what you’re doing is you’re just completely wiping out the food stock for the birds or other creatures in the hedges for that period of time. And you’re decimating the benefits that solar could actually bring. And I think, you know, we’ve been working with the technical asset management team and the owners.
And we’ve delivered a lot in the last 24 months and we’re going to deliver a lot more in the next.
well, goodness knows how long, but it’s years ahead. We’re looking at not just ensuring that the LEMP compliance, that’s the Landscape Environmental Management Plan, is upheld, but also that we’re going above and beyond. We’re putting in more habitats, such as wildflower. But wildflower that works, not just wildflower that’s done to tick a box, it’s wildflower that’s managed and maintained, that flourishes and does actually benefit the biodiversity.
So there’s a lot of discussion, there’s a lot of conversation around the industry and in the development sector, you you look at the big housing developments, these big commercial developments, industrial developments, they all need to meet certain targets. They all need to have 10 % BNG and that’s biodiversity net gain. So they need to have more biodiversity in 20 years time than they was in their existing.
as soon as the shovel hit the ground. With solar you can achieve that ⁓ really quite easily, really, really easily, but it’s not so easy for those industrial and commercial sites and those house building sites. There’s huge opportunities for the industry to offset the other industries’ impact.
and they can buy credits from the solar owners. Solar is a unique position. It’s hundreds of acres of land which is not lost to solar, which is an argument we still hear again and again on a daily basis, which is absolutely nonsensical. You’ve not lost any land at all. You’re just generating electricity. You can still farm. can still graze sheep.
you can still do other things. There’s going to be innovation in agrivoltaics, absolutely will do. it’s happening elsewhere, it will happen here as well. But you know, there’s so much opportunity. You’ve got long lease, 25, 40 year leases. You’ve got enough time to actually make a huge impact and increase the natural capital on solar farms, wherein the rest of the UK is fundamentally on the decline, which is a real scary thing to see.
But we can, using our position, our very unique position of these long leases, these open, vast stretches of land, we can actually make a difference.
Vikram (1:03:45) Fantastic,
it does give you a warm fuzzy feeling when you work in things that don’t destroy the environment and you know I’ll be watching Dilly Squat Farm on Amazon and one of the things that do excite me about the future of solar is to you know engage more with farmers and landowners in future because intensive farming it’s not sustainable you actually take all the nutrients out of the soil and you desertify the soil and you kill all habitats kill all insects and poison your waterways
So for me, think not many people understand the environment impact than farmers who are dealing with it on a daily basis. with Liam by my side, I don’t know many other people that are on solar farms as much as you and how hard you work. And as we come to close to this podcast, do you have any last words, Liam, before we close?
Liam Hicks (1:04:35) ⁓ I’d just like to say thank you to you Vikram for ⁓ all that you do for the industry. I think this podcast has been fantastic and I think that you’re very humble, you don’t give yourself enough credit for what you’ve done within the industry and your time when I was at Solar Sentry and before that, ⁓ the innovation you’ve done at the front end and the constant champion of promoting the industry and
and fighting for it to be a better industry constantly and all the time. Thank you to you and thanks to Rob as well because you guys have gave my company in particular a chance very early on. I like to think that we’ve lived up to your expectations and exceeded in some instances but yeah I’d just like to thank you both and it’s been fantastic coming here today and seeing you both in person. We don’t get to do it a lot, I’m always in the field so I ⁓
I rarely see people face to face. It’s always over the phone or on a teams meeting. yeah.
Rob Tippett (1:05:42) you
Vikram (1:05:42) Thank you,
Liam and you can’t take all the credit because you’re only as good as the people that you work with and a young chap called Matthew Zanakis, who is co-founder of this podcast. He’s the one that gave me the confidence to start and Clive Cosby who made ⁓ a more bigger thing than it was intended. thanks so much, Rob and Liam for joining us today.
Rob Tippett (1:06:02) No problem, thanks very much.
Vince Barnes (00:00) you
Welcome to the Future of Solar podcast with Vikram Kumar.
Vikram (00:15) Now on our magic number, ⁓ 10th podcast. Today we have the absolute pleasure of having a very important person from the industry join us, Mr. Vince Barnes. So he’s an electrical engineer, a solar and battery project developer, a musician, a very senior manager from the past, a giant called Wurzel, an ex-submariner.
We’ve had someone from the Navy now, sorry, we’ve had someone from the Army now we’ve got someone from the Navy. Vince, welcome.
Vince Barnes (00:50) Thank you very much, Vikram. I just hope I can live up to your big intro there. And it’s always a pleasure to speak to you.
Vikram (01:01) The feelings likewise, Vince. We didn’t talk much about our backgrounds and I think this is proving to be popular on our podcast. Can you tell us a bit about Anthony Hopkins as a new advert of Welcome to Wrexham, where he looks in the mirror and says, who are you? I find that quite chilling, know, who are you Vince? Can you tell us about your early life growing up in Newcastle and your football and your rugby stuff?
Vince Barnes (01:26) Yeah, certainly. So ⁓ I was born just outside of Newcastle and in a little village and I had a fairly normal upbringing. But I was one of those kids that when I was about five or six, my mother was constantly having to come out and find me, which was always in the same place on the football field playing football with my mates. And I could play for eight, nine, 10 hours a day and not get tired.
And when I went to the comprehensive, became, I was a goalkeeper and also a rugby player. And when I was, I was 11, I think it was, and I used to play in goal and I really loved it. And I had a nickname at the time of Mick Mabini. My nickname was Bean because ⁓ I was tall, well, I wasn’t tall, I was just very skinny.
And there was a goalkeeper playing for Newcastle at the time called Mick Mahoney. And my nickname was Mick Mabini because I was a goalkeeper and I was tall and my nickname was Bean. So that was my football side of things until I went into the Navy. But I was also when I was 11 and 12, I ⁓ used to play rugby. And I remember once we played a game against a local comprehensive called Bladen.
And they had a massive guy who I’m sure this guy wasn’t 11 years old. He must’ve been about 15 or 16, but he was in the 11 year old team. And he was, he was the equivalent of Jonah Lumu when he destroyed England. And he just went through our defense like, like butter. And I hadn’t actually had a run in with him. And then we were getting beat 42-0 and he came running and he was running at me.
And whereas everybody else was running away and not wanting to be plowed by him, I ran for him and he kind of did a double take. And I, as he came closer to me, I left for his legs, his ankles, and he went flying right over my head and banged his head. And after that, he wouldn’t go anywhere near me. And we ended up, we ended up coming back. It was 42, 22 or something, 42, 23. We still lost, but it wasn’t by such a significant margin.
So that’s my rugby career. I did sort of play rugby when I was in the Navy, but not as much as football.
Vikram (04:03) So 42 nil, can only be rugby, right? Share with us more about this young rugby prodigy.
Vince Barnes (04:14) Well, I don’t really know much about him. was…
Yeah, sorry, I don’t really know much about him. just know that he was a huge, he was probably twice the height of me. I mean, when I was a kid, when I was 11 years old, I was one of the smallest in my class. And this guy was, you know, he was very big. I was a hooker and he was just a giant running towards the team. And even the big guys on our team were afraid of him because once he built up a momentum, you know,
Challenging him stopping him, you know, buddy to buddy just wasn’t working He was just plowing through everybody and and I was small and there was no way I was gonna stand up to him and and just say Come on and have a go because he would have walked right over me. And so I just went for his ankles and you know, finally Fortunately made a good tackle clipped his ankles together and he went flying over the top me Thankfully didn’t land on me. Otherwise, I’d probably not be here today to tell the tale
⁓ But as I said, a prodigy, I really don’t know anything about him, just that he was big and fast. Just like John Olumu.
Vikram (05:24) It speaks a lot of your character because I’m a Sunday league coach for my sons under 13s and often we come across a big guy who walks through the whole three-year team and you can take the horse to the water but you can’t make a drink and I very much live by that because some of the littlest boys they impress you and just get stuck in. What inspired you to join the Navy at the age of 17, Vince? And how did
Your sporting interest continues during the Navy.
Vince Barnes (05:56) Well, it was, the Navy was, it’s something that came about when I was five years old. I was on a little rowing boat in Scarborough with my parents, my brother and my sister. And it was a really windy day and the sea was up and we were chugging along in this, it was a rowing boat but it had an engine on the back. And we were chugging along. I don’t know who stupid idea it was to have a day out on a boat when it was.
pouring with rain and windy. But anyway, we went out on this boat and I was petrified. I won’t deny it. I looked at the waves and they were twice the height of me. And I thought this boat’s never gonna survive. But when we got back in, I thought I’m never ever gonna be afraid like that again. And I determined then I was gonna join the Navy. My stepfather at the time ⁓ was in the Navy and it was just something that I had in my mind.
And I kind of took a little bit of a wobble when I was 13. I joined the Air Training Corps. I loved flying. I wanted to be a pilot. I went to do the pilot tests, which are quite stringent, especially the medicals are a whole one-day ⁓ test. And when I went in for it, everything was fine. ⁓ Physically, I was very fit. the one thing that they said was, you have a slight astigmatism.
in your right eye and this was at the age of about 15. And I, you know, they offered me aircrews. was signed up to go into the RAF as aircrew when I was 17. But I wasn’t really passionate about it. And then one day I happened to be in Newcastle in town with some friends and we had a few beers and we came out of the Air Twine Lodge and
and right across the road from Yates Wine Lodge, which is opposite Central Station. It’s not there now, but it was the Royal Naval Recruiting Office. And I thought, it would be a good idea to go in and see if I can join the Navy. So I went in and they literally dragged me off the street and said, yeah, come in. ⁓ I signed some forms, I went away and I had to go back and do some assessments and everything. But the funny thing is,
When I was, ⁓ when I went back home to my mum’s house and bearing in mind she’d already signed the forms for the RAF. And so she was, she was of the opinion I was going to join the RAF and I walked in and I said, mama, you need to sign these forms for me. And she went, but I’ve already signed them. I said, no, this is for the Navy. And she went ashen white. And I said, what’s the matter? She said, my friend Barbara, who was a clairvoyant, she read tea leaves.
She called my mum up and said, is your Vince gonna join the forces? And she said, yeah, he’s joined in the REF. And she said, no, no, I’m seeing a dark uniform. And like I said, five minutes later after she had that call, I walked in and said, I’m wanting to join the Navy. So it was kind of a long thing, but I’d always wanted to join the Navy. And then eventually, as luck would have it, I joined in January the 2nd.
Vikram (09:41) It’s interesting that you’ve got experience in energy and ⁓ in the Navy and you had some thoughts about the RAF. As I said earlier, we’ve had an army man on board ⁓ with the podcast and we are in middle of an energy war. The Department of Defense, they are complaining about the army, the Navy, everything’s shrinking and we need to get into a war footing, which is quite frightening for me. ⁓
What’s new is because of remote working, it’s very difficult for us to get to know our colleagues and to build a chemistry which is essential for successful work. How did you name the cat, Vince?
Vince Barnes (10:19) Well, was… So, as I said, I used to be a goalkeeper and when I joined the Navy, ⁓ I signed up to the… So, where I was was at HMS Fiskar. There were six divisions and each division had a football team and I happened to be… And we had two teams. I happened to be the goalkeeper for my division. And we were playing… We did this knockout competition.
where the divisions were split East side and West side. There was three divisions on East side, three divisions West side. And it’s kind of like the Champions League where ⁓ everybody on the East side plays each other and home and away, even though it’s the same football pitch. And then everybody on the West side plays each other home and away. And whoever’s the top of each division, if you like, played each other. And so I was in goal in the final.
And their team was absolutely all over us. I was probably one of the busiest goalkeepers ever. ⁓ Every 30 seconds I was making a save and there was one particular, ⁓ the attacker was, one attack where the attacker was coming in. He got through our defense and there was only me and him ⁓ and one defender. The defender ran out.
He took a shot and I was at one side of the goal. He bent the ball around to the other side of the goal. And I literally stretched right across the goal and tipped it around the post. Now on that particular post was the divisional officer from the opposite team. And he literally jumped on the pitch because he thought it was a goal. He jumped on the pitch and started going, yeah. And the referee told him to get off the pitch and there was the ball in my hand and he said.
How on earth did you ever get to that ball? That was a dead on goal. And from there on, I was nicknamed the cat.
Nothing to-
Vikram (12:26) The
Navy is a big highlight on your profile. Did you say in the past you were in charge of a nuclear weapons submarine? Did I remember that right?
Vince Barnes (12:42) Yeah. ⁓ So I was, ended up being in charge of the missile control center on Polaroid submarines. And that is effectively the computer systems. ⁓ And I say computer systems with tongue in cheek because the memory storage on this huge computer system, took a room about the size of an average sized living room. ⁓
was 16 kilobytes. That was the ⁓ storage space. And so I was in charge of the missile control center. It was the system that made sure the weapons got to wherever they were going to go. But the funny thing and the ironic thing is ⁓ I used to write poetry a lot. I now write songs. And when I was 13, I wrote a song called Smoke Without Flame.
And it was a protest song about nuclear weapons and specifically about the Polaris nuclear weapons system. And at 23, there I was in charge of the Polaris nuclear weapons system. How ironic, eh?
Vikram (14:02) And on build up to this call you said you hardly come across ⁓ submariners. What is a submariner? think you said it’s as prestigious as being a fighter plane pilot in the RAF, right?
Vince Barnes (14:14) Yeah, so as a submariner, get, let me explain, in the marine, in the navy, sorry, there is two types of vessel. There’s a ship and there’s a target. Ship being a submarine and the target being what you would call something that floats on the surface. ⁓ And a submarine is just a long oblong tube which carries missiles or torpedoes and it goes under the water.
Now, on the submarines I was on, they were underwater for up to three or four months. The earlier submarines, the old diesel submarines, they would be underwater for about 24 hours and had to come up to, not to the surface, but just below the surface and recharge their batteries. But we were nuclear. We had a nuclear reactor on board, and so we could stay down. The only thing that
meant we had to come up with running out of food, running out of, well not running out of water, but running out of food and the crew not wanting to kill each other. that was, otherwise the Polaris weapon system, if it was all automated, would be able to patrol forever in a day.
So I guess, so question. Sorry, go on.
Vikram (15:32) in charge all this.
Please finish and then lead us to why you left the Navy you’re in charge of all this exciting stuff. Why would you leave?
Vince Barnes (15:46) Well, to finish off the question before, ⁓ what’s a Submariner? So the difference between surface fleet and submarine, the submarine fleet is on surface fleet, you need to know a little bit about every compartment. When you join, you spend the day on each compartment just getting to know it. When you’re on submarines, you spend between three and six months in doing what’s called your part three. And that means you have to know every single sea valve, every air valve, every hydraulic valve.
every ⁓ system for shutdown, how to shut down the door in the event of emergency, how to fight fires in the event of emergency, which isn’t just a fire extinguisher. could be ⁓ having to initiate the ⁓ firefighting, the dry powder stuff or whatever in the compartment, which meant you had to get out of that compartment as well. So you had to know everything about that compartment in case
something happened, a missile hit the compartment and it blew up and you happened to be walking by it, aware of it, and the people in the compartment were dead. You had to be able to shut it down. You had to be able to fight the fire remotely or internally. so at the end of your three months or however long it takes, part three, you get an exam, which is a walkthrough. And you go with one of the officers and walk through from
from aft to forward or forward to aft and they will walk through with you and ask you a question. How do you shut down? There’s been a hydraulic leak. How do you shut it down? Tell me about hydraulic leak. What’s the dangers? What can happen? And all that kind of thing. So when you finish your part three, you get what’s called your dolphins. And in true naval tradition, you stand up in captain’s table, he calls you forward.
congratulate you and he gives you dolphins in a tot of rum and you’re not allowed to pick the dolphins out. You have to catch them in your teeth while you’re drinking the rum. And I nearly swallowed the damn things.
Vikram (17:57) The Dolphins, it’s an insignia kind of medal you get when you’ve learned everything about the submarine and qualified as a submariner,
Vince Barnes (18:06) Yeah, so if you imagine a pilot gets his wings and he sews it onto his jacket, a submariner gets his dolphins, but these were like a gold badge that you put on your uniform. And it’s the same in every Navy throughout the world. Submariners get the dolphins. And it’s quite unique because I’ve met a number of, when I was in the Navy and just after when I was in the oil industry, I met a number of submariners.
And there’s a great amount of respect for each other. It doesn’t matter what Navy you were in. I met a Russian submariner once and I met a couple of French submariners when I was in Belgium. And it’s like, you’re a submariner. Yes. ⁓ that’s fantastic. You know, it doesn’t matter the Navy. They all have to go through the same thing. So they all know ⁓ that you’ve gone through what they’ve gone through. And it’s like, you know, I take my hat off to you, sir. You’ve become a submariner and that’s great.
So there’s a big camaraderie between some mariners around the world. Everybody has the respect of each other, which is a good thing, I think.
Vikram (19:17) And do you still have your dolphins?
Vince Barnes (19:20) They’re probably at my mum’s house to be honest. Because when I left the Navy I left everything at my mum’s house and she’s probably still got them there.
Vikram (19:31) I’ll be coming to your birthday, so hopefully we’ll get to see them then. And then why would you leave this exciting environment to join the oil and gas industry? You mentioned to me in the past you did hydrographic survey engineering. What is a hydrographic survey? And why did you leave the Navy?
Vince Barnes (19:49) Well, I’ll answer the second question first. hydrographic survey engineer is just somebody who is an engineer who sets up, installs equipment on say a layer barge or a tug. And we will do solar, sorry, sonar scanning of the seabed to find routes through for gas pipelines or oil pipelines. Or if we’re laying a pipeline, then we’ll be on a pipe layer barge and
I’ll be in charge of the navigation equipment to make sure that the pipeline is laid in exactly where it’s meant to be laid. So that’s what a hydrographic survey engineer is. Why did I leave the Navy? Well, basically because they put me in submarines and I joined the Navy to see the world and I wasn’t getting to see the world. after I was in the Navy for nine years, I was four years on submarines, five years as an apprentice.
And I was on surface ships for about a year and a in that time. And I just thought, this isn’t for me. You know, going down and coming back up was three months later. It wasn’t, it wasn’t a fun experience. I wanted to go out and, and, you know, have a girl in every port, um, drink beer with friends and new friends that I’d make in ports and stuff. And I wasn’t doing that. So in the end I decided to leave. And the funny thing is when I went to leave, the captain
And I’ll remember this guy for the rest of my life. He’s a guy called Peter Christmas, Commander Peter Christmas. And he was a lovely guy, really lovely ⁓ gentleman. you know, he knew every, there was 140 crew members on board the submarine and he knew the name of every single one of them. So that tells you the kind of guy he is. And when I went to the captain’s table to put my leave in, my request in to leave the Navy,
He said, why do you want to leave the Navy? And I said, well, I joined the Navy to see the world, sir. And I’m not getting to see it. And he laughed and he said, well, the next time we go on patrol, why don’t you come up to the control room and I’ll put the periscope up for you. And I said, that’s not quite the view of the world that I had in mind, to be honest.
Vikram (22:10) Isn’t it ironic? Was the submarine docked or was he actually sailing for three months under the oceans and the seas and you were actually traveling around the world but not actually seeing it? Did I understand that well?
Vince Barnes (22:21) Yeah, we were traveling around, we were going thousands and thousands of miles, but I wasn’t actually getting to, all I saw was the internal side, the tunnel of the submarine. another story to share is when I first went on patrol, or when I first went, before you go on patrol, you do what’s called a test.
So you spend a week at sea and it’s fire, flood and famine. And they drill you from like six in the morning until midnight. When we were heading out and we were about to dive for the first time, we have to do a deep dive pressure test. And you go down to a certain depth and you stay there for about five minutes. And if anything’s going to leak, it’s going to leak then because you’re going down about three times the depth that you would normally go if you were operational.
What they, so I was in the missile control center and what they had was a ⁓ piece of string. One of my colleagues had put a piece of string from bulkhead to bulkhead. And as we went down and got to the test depth, the string was touching, was actually on the floor. So the pressure on the submarine was that much that it
gone down about a meter and maybe 1.2 meters to the floor. And then they fastened it ⁓ again while we were down there. And as we were coming up, at some point ⁓ the string just broke. And that was a very graphic demonstration for me of how much pressure there is under the water. It’s quite incredible.
Vikram (24:15) the ⁓
Vince Barnes (24:44) I remember
Vikram (24:45) I’m surprised you do because we have had a few beers. How did your journey into renewable energy begin whilst living in Spain? How did you end up in Spain and how did your involvement in solar projects start then?
Vince Barnes (25:00) So I was, ⁓ once I left the Navy, I joined the oil and gas industry. I was in there for about four and half, five years. ⁓ And because of my naval background, was very highly in demand. And so I was always going offshore ⁓ because I used to get the job done. If equipment was broken, I would fix it because I’m a logical thinker. ⁓ And so I used to think logically and I would get the job,
I would get the faults repaired very quickly. And because of that, initially I was sent out to areas where they were having problems from the ship that I was on to go and fix somebody else’s problems. And then in the end, I just didn’t get home and I just said, ⁓ the only way I’m going to get out of this is by leaving the oil industry. And I went into IT. And so I developed, I used to do software development. ⁓
When I was working in the oil industry, just, just for fun and giggles, I wrote a piece of software that, that was a mapping software. And this is all in visual basic, by the way, a visual basic one. It was a mapping software, took datums from the, from WG184 and the clock datum, and was able to map where we were on the, on the ship, exactly where we were, just like this, the software that we were using, but
It took me about three days to develop it. Actually, it took me about a day and a half to develop it and a day and a half to find a comer in the wrong place. But so when I came out of the oil industry, I went into IT. And in 2002, think it was, I moved to Spain. And I maintained my thing in IT. And at the time, the internet was
was a big thing. just had the dot com boom and bubble, ⁓ the dot com bubble and bust. And so I was developing websites, I was developing backend systems. And I ended up ⁓ in the village I was working in, or living in, sorry, a little place called Playa de Piles in the Valencia region. There was ⁓ an estate agent and
I got to meet one of the girls from the estate agent. She found out what I did and she said, why don’t you come along on Monday and we might have some work for you. So I went along and they had, their IT was terrible. And I just said, you need to solve this. And the next day I came in, I’d written them a database to make the production of the leaflets I put out on the window.
⁓ easier because I saw this girl trying to do it. It took her 25 minutes to put something together in Word and rearrange it and then print it off. And so I ⁓ created an access database and said, use this instead. It took her about two minutes. ⁓ And then I started doing that for the state agents. And then eventually I went to went to PHP and SQL and did it on website and etc, etc. And then
Through that, became a… So this was an estate agent and a friend of mine wanted to buy a house and so she came over and I sat down with her for about an hour and a half, asked her what she wanted. The next day I went back to the office, I brought three or four properties, the details of three or four properties and put the one that I thought she would go for on the top and she loved it. And when she bought it, the guy from the estate agency gave me
give me 1500 euros and I was like, what’s this for? said, for selling a house. And I went, that’s more than you’ve paid me in the past month. I’m gonna change careers. So I became not an estate agent, I was more of a buyer’s agent and a property developer out there. And then from that, this was in 2002, 2003. In 2006, I was working for myself as a buyer’s agent and I met a guy out there who
was looking for a large plot of land, sorry, 1500 square meter plot land with the permission to build 200 square meters. So I showed him a few and he wasn’t very happy because the prices were very expensive. And I said, well, you’re better off actually going for 10,000 square meters of rustic land because if it’s over 10,000 square meters, you can build a two meter house and you can just fence off 1500 meters.
Vikram (29:47) This is your friend DJ, right? This is Mr. DJ Bruins, right?
Vince Barnes (29:50) Bruins.
So it was DJ Bruins looking for his uncle. And he mentioned, ⁓ can put in the other eight and a half thousand square meters, I can put a solar park in and I went, what on earth a solar park? And so he told me, I got interested, we kept in contact. And, and then, you know, I did some marketing ⁓ collateral for him and a few other little bits and pieces. And one day he called me up and said, What are you doing for the next few months? And I said, Well,
I’ve just sold three houses. It’s coming into summer. I haven’t had a summer off since I’ve been in Spain, so I’m going to take the summer off.” He went, no, you’re not. I need your help. We’ve just lost a 20 million pound ⁓ sale on one of our projects because our documentation was rubbish. And I said, I need somebody who’s diligent, can speak English and put the documentation together. So I went in. Within about a week or so, I’d done what he’d asked me to do.
And I was about to leave and I said, by the way, ⁓ what I’ve noticed from being here for the week is that you have the guys in the warehouse and the guys, the guys, well mainly the girls ⁓ in the front office, have no idea what each of the does. they’re all, it’s like they’re all in different ⁓ compartments and they don’t even know what each of the does. And at least on a submarine, we might’ve been in compartments, but everybody knew what everybody else did. And…
And I think that the pace of growth that you’ve got at the moment, and he was growing rapidly. When I first met him, he had two employees working for him. When I started working for him, he had about 20 working for him. And this was in the space of a year. ⁓ you know, he, I said, the pace of growth that you’ve got now, you’re going to be in big, big problems if you don’t sort it out.
And so he asked me to come on board as a commercial director, which I did. And I stayed in Spain working with DJ until 2009. And then in September 2008, the Spanish government removed all of the capacity. The feed-in tariff went down from, I think it was 32 cents to some ridiculous amount, ⁓ but worse still.
They limited the capacity that could be installed in 2009 to 400 megawatts. And bearing in mind that in September 2008, they just installed three gigawatts in one month. So it gives you an indication as to how they destroyed the market literally overnight. know, in 2009, left CDS employee because the company wasn’t doing very well. So we agreed to part our ways. And I was working for
pretty much for myself doing rooftop installations. And then after that, I came back to the UK in 2010. And the funny thing is, before I came back to the UK, I was thinking about it anyway, because finding work in Spain at the time was very difficult. The crisis really, really hit hard. And I had a look at the UK just out of curiosity if it was viable in the UK, you know, with the radiation, et cetera.
And I found an announcement that Gordon Brownhood was going to introduce a feed-in tariff at the end of 2009. this was just before then. thought, and it was 32p, I think it was. And I thought, wow, I did some quick numbers. And I thought, yeah, that would work. Who knew? Sully would work in the UK. I think it was May the 1st, 2010.
I jumped on a plane and came back to the UK, stayed with my brother and I was only going to stay for two weeks and just decide what I wanted to do and within 24 hours I decided I was staying back in the UK again. So that’s how I came back to the UK.
Vikram (33:52) A lot of people I know in solar suffer from burnout or anxiety of some kind because it’s a boom and bust sort of industry. Things change all the time. People get very excited and things deflate and then if you win a job it becomes all work, work, work and in your case it was it seems like it wasn’t all bad in the Navy. I did a bit of research before this podcast. Were you on HMS IX? Did you get to go out to see Antarctica and how did
Your musical interests developed, was this during Spain when you brought your album Step into the Sunlight?
Vince Barnes (34:26) No, HMS Ajax was the ship I was on during my apprenticeship. And we went down to the Falklands and it was a great experience. And one of my most poignant moments was going to the Sub-Antarctic and seeing an iceberg at close quarters. Now have a photograph of it. It was only a small one. It looked like it was popping its head out.
And it looked like you could almost reach out and touch it, but it was actually, it was about three and half miles away. And there was a ⁓ massive ice wall, which again looked, it looked as if it was about five, six miles away, but it was 20 odd miles away. It was that big. was, it was popping up well above the sea level. But my favorite experience and all of that was I was walking along the beach at Gridviken.
There was a whole bunch of us had gone ashore on a whale just for bit of ⁓ giggles. And as we walking along the beach, and bear in mind it was minus 15, ⁓ there was three penguins came out of the sea. And they were about 10 meters from us and they started walking towards us as if they say, hey, get off my land you. And I found it quite incredible. And I took my camera out.
And I started walking towards these penguins and all turned away and they were waddling down to the water. But when they hit the water, they were like torpedoes. They just shot through that water. Anyway, one of them came back. ⁓ He was obviously very curious. And when I took my camera ⁓ out again, I started walking towards him and I have this brilliant photograph of him. And it’s like he’s flying on the beach. His wings are spread out and he’s running down as fast as he can carry him.
And it’s one of my most treasured moments. I will probably never experience meeting a penguin in its natural habitat ever again. ⁓ And it was just incredible. The scenery was breathtaking. There was a mountain drop behind us. There was icebergs all around us. And just incredible, the most amazing experience.
Vikram (36:40) Fantastic. it’s football polluting my brain. It’s not HMS IX, it’s HMS Ajax. And your musical interest, did that start in the UK later on? It started in UK.
Vince Barnes (37:00) Yeah, I mean, when I was on the submarine, was playing. We had a band on the submarine, which isn’t a very good thing because you make a lot of noise on the submarine. can be heard for miles to listening sonar. But we were in safe places, so we could play. And I really enjoyed it. I used to play bass at the time. And we went away on one trip, and I bought this ⁓ Tascam Porter Studio, which meant I could draw a chord.
four tracks onto a cassette tape, remember them? Probably if there’s anybody younger than 40 thinking, what on earth is a cassette tape? But anyway, so I started writing songs and I wrote one which I actually released in 2017, but I wrote it in 1988. And it was when we were meant to be coming home for Christmas and we got told that we were gonna be staying out for two extra weeks.
So I wrote this song and it was kind of an angry song. And then all of sudden we were told that we were actually coming in in five days time, just in time for Christmas. And I wrote the song called, I’ll Be Home for Christmas Day. So I’ve always written poetry or songs ⁓ since I was about 11, 11, 12. I’ve just had a fascination with rhyme and with words. And whilst I was in the Navy, I wrote ⁓ quite a few songs.
I probably had about 150. Some of it I got recorded, but most of them I didn’t. And over the years, I’ve kind of written songs, but there was, just before I moved out to Spain, there was a friend of mine who we went out to the local pub, and the local pub were doing something called an open mic. Well, I’d never come across an open mic night before, and…
You know, this guy was up there and his girlfriend was going around asking everybody if, ⁓ if they played. And I was, I was just shrinking to the bar and drinking my beer. And my mate turned around and said, yeah, he does. He plays music. He’s got, he writes and sings. I’m going, no, don’t. Nobody wants to listen to my music. They all want to listen to covers. Anyway, she persuaded me to get up and play. And I was with a group of friends and, ⁓ you know, the, the, I got up and played a couple of my songs.
And the response was incredible. I don’t know whether it was because we were friends and we were just, you know, being supportive, but the rest of the audience as well started clapping. And this was just before I out to Spain. When I went out to Spain in 2002, where my apartment was, there was a bar right in front of me. And I got to know the owner very, very well, probably through spending all my waking hours in there when I wasn’t working.
there was on my birthday, which is in May, ⁓ I had invited a few people over from the UK and had a bit of family there and a few friends that I’d made. And so I had this birthday party on my terrace, which was quite a big terrace ⁓ in my apartment. ⁓ so I had all my music gear set up and ⁓ I played live, just me and my guitar. ⁓
the guy across the bar from the other, Francois, was standing outside the bar listening. And when I’d finished and put everything away and everything, and next day I went down to the pub and he said, why don’t you play in here? And I’m like, oh no, I only know those 10 songs. He said, it doesn’t matter, come down on Friday and play. So I went down on Friday and I played the 10 songs that I knew twice.
because otherwise it have been a very short concert. And this guy came up to me and said, do you know the Beatles’ Let It Be? And I said, I don’t know it now, but if you come back on next Friday, I’ll learn it for you. And then a couple of other people asked for songs as well. So I did those three and I learned a couple more. So I did 15, repeated them twice. So I was playing for two and a bit hours. And they were enamored with it because I’d actually taken the time to learn the songs and played for them their favorite songs.
And it kept building up like that. And then in, I think it was in 2006, 2007, I wrote this song called Dance With Me, which you’ve heard played live, by the way.
Vikram (41:34) I have a tea, or something it was.
Vince Barnes (41:37) No, no, Tea Coffee or something was a lot later. Dance With Me was the first song that I ever had properly professionally recorded. it was, there was a local radio station in near where I lived in a place called Havia called Coast FM. And there was a guy on there called Bob, Bob James. And I cheekily sent this letter to him saying, I’m the man sitting in the bins outside knocking on your window when it’s cold. And
but I’m also launching a single called Dance With Me. And he got back in touch with me. He phoned me up and said, have you spoken to anybody else about this? And I said, no. He said, we’ve effectively got a world exclusive. I said, well, you’re the only other person in the world that knows about it apart from me and my family. And so he listened to it. He was brilliant for about a whole week. He was gonna launch it on this Wednesday afternoon between two and three.
And for the whole week leading up to it, he had all his listeners enthralled, know, they’re all wanting to listen to Dance With Me. And he kept saying, don’t forget, we’ve got a world exclusive on Wednesday, local artists. And I used to call myself the extranjero, which means the foreigner or the stranger in Spanish. And so he was announcing this and, you know, it was brilliant that there was people.
in the area who were listening to it, but it was also probably one of the first live streamings done, certainly then at the time, in 2006, 2007. so I sent this song to my sister, and my niece at the time was about six, seven months old, and she had a baby bouncer in the doorway. And my sister was playing dance with me in the background, and she sent me a link on YouTube. I didn’t even know what YouTube was at the time.
And so I listened to it and I saw Jasmine bobbing up and down in a baby bouncer and to dance with me. And to this day, and the last time I seen Jasmine was about a week ago when I was down south. And she told me then that in spite of all of Taylor Swift and Harry Styles and Bruna Mars that she was into at the time, that her favorite song of all time is Dance With Me, which I’m really pleased with, really, really chuffed with.
So after that, sorry, go on.
Vikram (44:10) You’ve got so if I manage to keep up a bit, I think I heard you say you wrote 150 songs in the Navy, you’re a goldmine of creativity. I was referring to coffee or something as a gig that you did for homeless shelters in Portsmouth. So I did hear a few of your songs then. And then please finish on your music. if you’ve got links,
Vince Barnes (45:00) Okay, so I’ll make it very quick. So I decided, as I said, that was going to move back to England from Spain in 2010. And part of that was part of the driver for that was the music because I was playing in a band in Spain and the musicians were very flaking and I thought this can’t be the same in England. So I’m definitely going to move back to England and it’ll be much easier there. So when I went back to England, I had this
I had this ⁓ drive for, I have a dream and that’s literally the name of a song that I wrote as well. And it was, it started in 1994 when I went to see the Eagles live on stage and I was looking at the cloud and it was very eclectic. was an old lady beside me and her granddaughter. There was a couple of yuppies, was loads and loads of hippies. was people just like me dressed in jeans and t-shirt. There was every kind of person from every walk of life.
They started, when the band were playing, was great, everybody was singing, it was just enjoying themselves. And then they started playing Lying Eyes. And as soon as the words started, it was like everybody had been told by somebody that you have to sing along to it, because the whole stadium, and this was at Wembley, just sang to Lying Eyes. And at the time, that was one of my favorite songs.
brought the hairs up on the back of my neck and I just thought this must be the most amazing experience as a songwriter to sing their songs in front of an audience. And so that was when my dream was born and that’s what I was following when you saw us in 2017. yeah, Tea Coffee or Something was written in 2016 and it was a guy that I met on the street and he asked me if I had any change, which I didn’t.
and it was quarter to 11 at night and I said, but you he was sitting outside of Sainsbury’s, said, I’ll buy you a tea or a coffee or something. And he said, if you wouldn’t mind, I’ll have a sandwich and a pint of milk. So I did, I sat down with him on the street. was, I think it was February, it was freezing cold, but you know, I thought, well, if he can hack it, so can I. So I sat down and talked with him for half an hour. ⁓ Started bumping into him for quite a lot.
And we became friends, he became a friend of the band, he became a bit of a roadie, ⁓ helping us out every now and again. And he loved coming to the studio, watching us play. And then ⁓ I tried to do something for homeless people. I wanted to do something and make a difference. And tried to get him off the street, but he’d been on so long that he just wasn’t interested. And that’s what I found with a lot of homeless people who’d been on the streets for a long time.
They don’t really know how to cope with the real world. Their real world is a lot different to ours, obviously. And so ⁓ I’d written this song about him and I got it recorded and it was in May the 5th. My birthday seems to come up quite a lot here, doesn’t it? Anyway, May the 5th.
Vikram (48:13) 2017
with the- ⁓
Vince Barnes (48:17) Yeah, we played in in Portsmouth Guildhall and you and a few, I think it was your brother, your wife and David from DK Cables and his wife and a couple of others ⁓ booked a table and we raised, I think about two and a half thousand pounds for, ⁓ which we donated to ⁓ the Pompey Bus, was a bus which was being, it was given by Go Ahead.
And it was being reformed and people would donate in the town, they would donate materials and donating money to get this bus up and running. And I think it was about three months after that, it was donated to a local charity, fully done with enough beds for 10 people. So I did get into the homeless thing for a while and we ended up going to a hostel as a band and
We just, we’d organize it with the owners of the hostel that we could come in and we just did ⁓ a bit of a concert. And what happened was the people that were there, there was only about 10 of them in the common room and we were only playing acoustically, but they all wanted to play. They all had some musical talents. said, yeah, no worries. Just want to play the guitar, want to play bass, drums, whatever. And it was a bit of a mishmash, but it was really good fun.
And so I spoke to the organizers and said, you know, there might be an opportunity here to help homeless people through music. Why don’t we put out ⁓ an appeal and see if anybody’s got any instruments they don’t want? Well, we had enough instruments at full, like a full PA system and everything, drum kits, the whole work. We had enough instruments to basically do two bands. People were so generous.
And we donated to this hostel and we went down a few times to do some jam sessions to get them up and running. And then after that, we did the second concert in December of 2017. So that’s really my story with music. In 2018, I’d become jaded with the band and I think it was, we launched the album, Step into the Sunlight on June the 30th, 2018.
and I disbanded the band in July 2018 and I haven’t really done anything since. Until now.
Vikram (50:49) Wow, wow. So 2017 was an important year because 2016 we had the Brexit referendum and all these uncertainties started before 2017. We had more work than we had capacity. We were forecasting huge, huge growth in 2017 and they all just completely crashed. The chap that paid for half of this table in your gig in Portsmouth, his name was Ross Kenway, brothers with the Firefighter Mark Kenway worked with him as well.
Those two brothers, make leads for Henry Hoover’s at Vacumatic. Very nice bunch of lads. Lots of things we can’t talk about because of the crash and burn nature of the industry. And then your involvement with DJ Bruins, it seems like it carried on potentially with Risen Energy and Smart Energy Solutions or SCS, which you mentioned in the past, you grew to massive turnover in a short period of time. Are you able to delve a bit more into that?
Vince Barnes (51:44) Yeah, sure. So, so when I came back to the UK, ⁓ originally I was working with a company in Valencia who, who, when I moved to the UK, they wanted to explore the UK market, but within about three or four months, it was obvious that they didn’t really have the ⁓ money to invest. So I just, I went on the MCS database. I, I sent out 25 emails to people, to companies on the MCS database, just saying,
Would you like more clients? I’ve got a business model that can help expand your business rapidly. And I had 10 responses to it within about 20 minutes. One of them was SES. There was five others who wanted me to come in for an interview, but SES impressed me because there was three directors, Mark, Paul, and Philo. And they were ⁓ sitting in the boardroom.
It was a religious kind of office, but we were sitting in the the boardroom having a conversation and I produced this three-page business plan and said ⁓ basically in the UK everybody’s going down to Cornwall, but what everybody doesn’t seem to realize is a radiation study has been done before ⁓ and if you look at where they put, and it was done by the Victorians, and if you look at where they put seaside towns, that’s where the highest irradiation is. That’s where you want to be focusing.
And strangely enough, Hull was one of the highest ⁓ radiation in the country outside of Cornwall and in the South Coast. ⁓ But nobody thought about Hull because it’s always wet and miserable. And yet there is nearly a gigawatt of solar being developed and built in Hull. ⁓ Anyway, so after doing this, you know,
Paul said to me, he actually said to Mark and Philip, close the door and don’t let him get out until he signed the contract. Jokingly, thankfully. So I started working for them. And at the time, were only, I think they turned over 500,000 pounds in the year before. And so I joined them in November, I think it was November the 10th, 2011. And in June, so the timeline was on June 28th, I’d met a guy called
Aaron Mowbray, was him and his business partners from a company called M03. So was basically three guys named them, or named Mo, and they were, they had this project for sale. And as you know, in July, July the 31st, 2012 was when the feeding tariff went down from 32p to 8.5p. And they had this site which was
effectively worthless because nobody wanted to buy it. was only four weeks away from the, from the, feed-in tariff end. And, and Paul Hunter, I went to see him and said, there’s an opportunity here. Quick. And he said, okay, nobody’s let’s do it. So, and in the meantime, by the way, DJ had come on board with SES. So I called the DJ. He was, he’d been working in Italy and I said, there’s an opportunity here. You know, they’re looking at, ⁓
distribution and all sorts of things. And this is right up your street. ⁓ So he came over and we were all sitting around the table and I said to DJ, can we build it? Yes, we can. so we, DJ and I spent seven nights, speaking to Risen, nights because they were in China and they started at midnight our time and went to bed at, or went home at nine o’clock our time as well. So, and then
DJ and I were working during the day. So we got about three or four hours sleep for seven or eight nights in a row. But in that week, we’d managed to secure agreement and then secure the funding and the contracts were signed on July the 15th, which is a Friday. And I remember being on site with a guy called Brian Butler from Western Power Distribution. And he said, there’s absolutely no way on this earth you are going to build a solar park in two weeks.
And I said to him, I looked him straight in the eye and I said, is that because you can’t deliver in time? He said, yeah, we can deliver no problem. I said, well, you worry about your partnership and I’ll worry about mine. And then 10 days later on July the 28th, he, ⁓ he came on site to connect up and he said, I don’t know how that have you gone and built a five megawatt solar power in 10 days? And I said, it’s because we had to, there was no, there was no
what happens if, and then I got that question on site quite a lot of times, what happens if we don’t make it? Well, you don’t have a job, so keep working. And we did it, in spite of everything, we did it. And that was a project to pull together, because in four weeks, have to do, know, fortunately, we managed to find a ⁓ transformer that GE had that they’d been let down on, and there was lots of things like that that happened.
and everything just clicked into place. So there was a lot of luck as well because you know, it’s almost impossible even now to pull a solar part together even small as five megawatts nowadays in a month and get it fully funded. that’s probably one of my
Vikram (57:22) A lot of people, the things we need to do a whole series to cover all our stories, but there’s a lot of people tune into this podcast because they want to know about your time at Versaul and we’re starting a new Gold Rush now and the new Gold Rush is going to be so mental because, can I even say that? It’s going to be insane the new Gold Rush because we’re talking about 300 megawatts to gigawatt scale projects and we haven’t got anywhere near the people we had before and I came across you
When I, when I took my first holiday in years, managed to secure some cash flows and, you know, grew, started to grow my own business. And I thought I deserved a holiday. So I went to California for the first time and I was on a beach and I was getting panicky phone calls from a chap called Richwin. And he was late in the evening and, and he wanted to place orders for Whirlpool in a extreme panic. and we, we managed to the orders out. Why would I say no to money? Even if, even on a beach, you take the orders and then I come back.
jet lag from California ⁓ and the first visit is to come and meet you in Sussex as you’re starting at Wurzel and there’s all these stretches coming out of everywhere and we haven’t got time, have to deliver. comment briefly about the things you can say about your time at Wurzel. There’s a lot more we need to cover as well, Vince.
Vince Barnes (58:40) Yeah, so basically I joined Worcel in June 2015. Mark had known previously when I was at SES and I just called him up and said, you know, gives a job sort of thing. And he said, what do want to do? I went, well, you know what, I quite fancy project management. And he said, have you ever done it? I said, of Mark, I’ve been doing project management since pretty much since I joined the Navy because everything that you do,
No matter what, you know, I was in business development for a long time, but sales, business development, whatever it is, you, project managing, you have to, you have to maintain contacts with people. You have to let everybody know what’s going on suppliers, clients, whatever, stakeholders. have to, you have to do that. So it’s project management is, is just part of what you do in life. I ⁓ And the funny thing is I,
don’t have never have had any project management qualifications, but I was able to deliver on time and in budget. And the only time that I missed it was because the solar park was built, but ⁓ the high voltage equipment was later turning up by about a week and a half. So we missed the cutoff. So my time in Warsaw was really quite, it was phonetic because as you well know,
You know, you get funding around about October time, October, November, and you’ve got to build everything by March 31st. And Mark was the MD at Wurzel and he was very, very, I wouldn’t say gung-ho, but he did have that attitude of, right, we’ve got this, how are we going to deliver it? And I was the one that was, how are we going to deliver it?
And did, you know, there was one time we had eight projects on the go and we delivered it. And it was, was frenetic. It was fun. It was, you know, it was about building relationships and I probably built more relationships in that period of time than I have done in most of my career. ⁓ know, Worsall was a great experience.
Vikram (1:00:50) Intensely you live sometimes. It’s so intensely you live sometimes. Unfortunately, we had a good reputation and Paul Richmond or yourself will be phoning me and saying, can you deliver so and so and so? I said, no, can’t, we’re full. by the way, we’ve sent a 600 grand payment. All right, we’ll deliver then. And so, it was a crazy intense period and a lot of it’s still not unpacked. I’ve got Google maps of the places I’ve been and the projects we’ve delivered to.
But wasn’t without its challenges. But even then, compared to what we’ve gone through with the COVID and Ukraine energy crisis and people just going missing from the industry, it was a good time. now we get to challenges in the industry. What were some of the challenges you faced while working in solar or still working in solar and batteries? And how do you think we can overcome them?
Vince Barnes (1:01:43) Well, think ⁓ over time, the biggest challenge was the cutoff date of more to 31st. mean, which idiot chose the end of winter to have a feed-in tariff drop? And that was always a challenge because, like I said, nobody made decisions during the summer. And it was always a late start. many, many a time I’ve been on a solar site and up to my knees deep in murder.
In fact, at one time, I remember we were connecting a project up in Worcestershire and Steve Ford, who you mentioned earlier, was walking around the solar park. Thankfully, he his waders on, the things that fishermen wear so they can go waist-high or chest-high into a river. And he literally walked on this bit of mud.
and it cracked below him and he fell up to his chest and they had to get a telehandler to lift him out. So that was over the time that was one of the challenges, but now I think the biggest challenge is grid connections. There’s no grid connections anymore and you’ve got to wait until 2032 plus if you can get one. And even though they’re reinforcing the grid, most of that capacity is already gone.
It’s just madness. one of the things in forward-looking is that there needs to be somebody who’s a responsible adult in government to make decisions because nobody’s really thinking about it. They’ve got this net zero and they want the banning cars, sale of ICE and diesel cars ⁓ by 2030.
But the estimate that there’s going to be eight or nine million EVs by 2030, but there’s no capacity. I had an electric vehicle two and a half years ago and I had to hand it back because I did a day trip, a day trip, an overnight trip to Hull to go and visit a site. And in that period, I was on the road for 22 hours, nine of it, which was actually traveling. The rest of it was looking for a charging point.
getting to a charging point and finding that it was broken or that there was 16 people waiting for that one of the two charges or that it was charging at 4.3 rather than 50 kilowatts and all of these kinds of issues. I just, you know, when I got back from that trip, thought, thankfully I had my car on the subscription service. And I just thought, no way that, you know, until the infrastructure’s there.
It’s just not viable. And I think that’s one of the biggest problems is the government saying go electric, but there’s nothing on the grid. There’s no capacity. And I think that’s where battery storage comes into its own. The battery storage at the moment is being put in on the grid and it’s there to flex the grid and that’s great. It does a great job at doing that. But there are so many
business out there who are suffering from high energy costs, great constraints, you manufacturers, steelworks, they’ve got very high energy costs. And but also they can’t expand their business because they’ve got great constraints or they’re having to go back to diesel generators to, to, you know, give them the extra capacity to expand their business so they can put in a cement work or, or, or do something else. And, and so I think the answer to me,
Is is what i would call a microgrid you know for companies to install their microgrid and it starts off with a battery you install the battery You charge it up overnight you deliver it during the day And hopefully you’ve got enough grid grid potential to to download for six hours But the average price of electricity between 12 and 6 is around about four or five p Whereas some of these companies are paying the care rates which are 25 30 p per kilowatt hour or the they’re reaching their
their grid capacity agreement and going over capacity. ⁓ if you’re in the red zone, I believe it’s something like 12 pounds per kilowatt hour. It’s phenomenal. so battery storage would be ⁓ a very good fix. And that’s what I’m kind of working on at the moment is how to use battery storage in a clever way and solving problems. Because I think one of the things that solar hasn’t really done is solve problems.
It’s just been, well, let’s plug it into the grid and, and get some money from it. But now I think it’s coming into its own with battery storage, but I think battery storage is the, is going to be the driver for the next phase of solar. And, and I see the future of solar, which links in very nicely with the title of this podcast is being, if you like a hybrid where let’s say you put in a battery and put solar on the roof.
But that then leaves the door open for if you want to plug in anaerobic digestion or wind turbines or pretty much any other energy source, it can go into this microgrid and it’s being fed from everywhere else. And in time, hopefully, that will remove the capacity from the grid so that you’re not needing it either as much or at all. And then you’re fairly self-sufficient. You want to expand?
get some planning in, put up a new wind turbine or let’s do something else. Or let’s get a private wire. There’s a solar park across the road. We’ll get a private wire from them, but that can fit into our system. And that’s how I see it going. That and community energy where all the houses and all the industrial units in an area have all got solar on. It’s all going into a communal part, you like, of communal storage.
And if you’re producing at the moment on your home, you’re getting paid peanuts and yet it’s still costing you 25p per kilowatt hour to buy it back from the grid. Whereas I think the fairer idea is with these community schemes is you have, you’re generating it and you’re putting it into the pot. That gives you credit of, let’s say you put in, I don’t know, in a year you’ve put in one and half megawatt hours.
You’re credited with that one and a half megawatt hours. You can draw it back at any time you want. And once you go over that limit, you then pay, let’s say 10 per kilowatt hour rather than 25 per kilowatt hour. And in that mix, you’ve got battery storage, you’ve got solar on everybody’s roof, you’ve got wind turbines, you’ve got anaerobic digesters. You’ve got all the different kinds of small scale stuff that you can have in a community.
and it’s all feeding everybody else. it genuinely everybody has an investment into their local area and everybody has a benefit from it. That’s my view anyway, that’s my vision. That’s where I see, that’s where I would like to see it go. I don’t know whether it’s going to go that way.
Vikram (1:09:05) Vince, you’re a very senior commercial person, you’re commercially very astute, but we mustn’t forget, you’ve been in nuclear submarines, you know electrical engineering, and you know a lot about the development side of things financially. If you look at it from a layman’s point of view, pubs are closing their doors because they can’t afford the energy, factories are shutting down, steel plants are closing because of net zero. There seems to be complete failure of regulation from the government.
You know, I’ve spoken to taxi drivers in London. They’re saying they can’t fund their EV because the finance payments are too much, the interest rates going up and the charging going up in some places up to 50 or 80 pence a kilowatt hour, which seems absolutely maddening for me. And you’ve got these aggregates, you’ve got the steel plants and their headspace is already fried. And they’ve got issued these penalties for consuming energy from the grid at the wrong time. Who funds the development for putting these microgrids in place and upgrading the switchboards and
the infrastructure that they might already have. Who pays for all of this development work at a smaller scale where there’s a crisis of energy for heavy industry users?
Vince Barnes (1:10:12) Well, if I look at what we’re doing at the moment, ⁓ I’m working with a company based in Newcastle, who they trade energy, but they also put in battery storage. also do, ⁓ they don’t do the planning. ⁓ That’s one of the roles I’m looking at ⁓ discussing with them. So effectively, if one of these companies, let’s just say,
and aggregates once has got a problem on one of their sites and they want to have this microgrid. We go in there, we assess what the energy use is and more importantly, when the energy use is so that even if we can’t supply the whole of the energy for the whole day from a battery because of the grid, we can at least supply them enough capacity to overcome the startup.
the inrush currents and the peak demands so that they’re not getting penalized. That in itself could pay for the battery itself. ⁓ But a lot of these companies, because they’re paying high energy prices, if you look at the manufacturing industries or the aggregate industries, their margins aren’t huge. They obviously play on volume, but if you’re
running your business at 10, 12 % margin and the energy price used to be 6 % of your total cost and now it’s 10 % or 12%. That means you’ve either got to put your prices up, which isn’t going to be popular, or you have to knock it on the chin and then you run the risk of not making enough margin to actually be operational. And so I think that’s a big, big issue.
based on that, they’re probably not going to get funding for it. So what we would do is working with these guys is we come in, we assess everything for them. And then we design a system for them. based on the system design, we would say to them, okay, we can do this. We can put the battery storage in, we can put solar on the roof. And we will deliver you energy at X pounds per megawatt hour, X pence per kilowatt hour.
Hopefully, that’s going to be a lot less than what they’re paying at the moment. We’re looking at a benchmark of between 10 and 12 p per kilowatt hour, but a lot of that depends on the circumstances ⁓ in their own situation. If there’s a lot of work to do, then it’s going to be a little bit more, but hopefully, it’s going to be a lot less than what they’re paying. But the beauty about this is the investors who are behind it are actually able to give price stability for up to 30 years.
Typically, it’s a 10-year rolling contract because batteries have a 10-year life. And so they’ll be looking to renew every 10 years. But they could still have a rolling contract for those 10 years with a known cost for those 10 years. And for some businesses, that’s imperative. It allows them to forecast. It allows them to budget. It allows them to know what their costs are going to be fairly accurately for quite some distance in the future.
Vikram (1:13:38) You said in the notes that it’s just very difficult to find decent grid connections available for the next few years, even though NASA grid are reinforcing their network. You said that there’s people going to find a million pound a year for breaching the demand capacity. What do you mean by that?
Vince Barnes (1:13:52) Well, let’s say you’ve ⁓ got a one megawatt connection. And let’s say that your base load is 500 kilowatts per hour. ⁓ So your one megawatt grid connection is fine for that. But when you start up all your machinery, if you’ve got lots of rotating machinery, you have inrush currents. And there can be three or four times the
the base load. So potentially you could be drawing down for half an hour or an hour, ⁓ something like 400 kilowatts over your agreed capacity. And the problem there is if you’re doing it during the peak time, so if you’re starting up at seven o’clock, that’s actually a peak time, you’re in the red zone. So you’re paying 12 pounds per kilowatt hour that you use during that period, plus you get fined ⁓ an additional fine on top of that.
So in this one instance, that example that you mentioned, they’re getting fined around about a million pounds a year just for breaching their contract. So if you put a battery storage in just to cope with that initial inrush, and that would be probably about a one megawatt battery, one megawatt hour battery, that would save them a million pounds a year. It would pay for itself in
Less than a year, well, half a year. ⁓ It’s a no-brainer. And this is what I mean by ⁓ the penalties. The penalties on the grid are getting higher and higher. But worse still is that now a lot of the grid operators, because they’re getting very, close to the thermal runaway ⁓ currents, they’re actually stopping ⁓ companies from going over.
They’re just saying, no, you can’t have it. If you go over, we’ll stop you. We’ll cut you off. And that’s probably even more potentially damaging to a business because if you start and then all of a sudden your machinery goes off, then that’s a big problem for you because you’ve got to start all the game from scratch or you’ve got a slow start and that can take two hours rather than 40 minutes or so.
Vikram (1:16:16) Fantastic. This podcast started off as a bit of fun between myself and Mr. Matthew Zanakis from JSola. He comes from Zimbabwe. He taught me something very fascinating, which is anyone with the name Kiss in the end is from the island of Crete, famous for Zeus. So, two more light-hearted subjects. We need to come back to these heavy topics, the problems, the crisis that’s being faced by small and medium-sized businesses. And hopefully we can find a way out of it.
Hopefully you’re still in touch with Mr. Mark Hogan, is a very well respected senior figure. believe he started Boom and more lightheartedly, you own a pub, I guess, with your brother. you know, as we meet up in this pub in the future, are you able to tell us how you think the future of the battery and solar technologies can evolve? know, we’ve got precious metals in these batteries that could be toxifying landscapes during mining. How do you see the future of
precious metals and the compounds and the alloys we might need for all the solar and battery technology.
Vince Barnes (1:17:18) Well, there’s obviously new technology coming out. And I believe Tesla announced last week sometime. And for the life of me, I can’t remember the name of the battery technology, but it’s lithium something. And it gets rid of the magnesium, the cobalt, and the nickel. the energy density is higher. And it’s
With, I think ⁓ Elon Musk announced that on one full charge, he replaced the battery in a typical Tesla and instead of going 310 miles, it went 730 miles. So it’s more than double the energy density. So I think, and that’s just today in two years time, battery technology comes on ⁓ in fits and starts, but when it goes, it goes big time. And there’s other technologies out there. ⁓
There’s what we call it ⁓ perovskite, you know, they’re developing that ⁓ into such that the efficiency of solar panels will go up with that. And that’s going to have a big impact because I think at the moment, the theoretical maximum of a solar panel with monocrystalline is off the top of my head around about 30%. I can’t remember the exact figure, but it’s around about 30%.
whereas perovskite is a lot higher, approaching 45, 50%. So that’s going to make a difference because with the same size field, you can get in 50 % more so you can get more power out. But we still have the problem, the issue with the grid, of course. And then that comes down to different storage technologies, battery, or, know, there I said, hydrogen. And at the moment, hydrogen isn’t ultimately viable because to convert one kilowatt of
of electricity into hydrogen, you lose 30 % on the import and output. But there are other technologies out there that are doing electrolysis in a different way. So I think the answer to your question is, at the moment, we’re not in a situation where that’s readily available and readily fundable. But then solar, when I first came to the UK in 2010, wasn’t fundable in the UK.
And now it’s like, you know, it’s probably one of the most bankable technologies in renewable energy. Yeah. You want to build this whole apart. No problem. We’ll fund that. How much do need? ⁓ And so I think these, these advances they’re coming. And when you get somebody like Tesla and I believe Ford, Volkswagen, and there’s about seven or eight other manufacturers or vying for position for this new technology, they’re all trying to sign contracts with the, with the developers and the
⁓ the manufacturers of it. So I think there’s a lot of new stuff that’s being developed right now. And we’re probably about two or three years from it being mainstream, but a lot of the projects that are in development in the UK now are 27, 28. So by the time we come around, a 400 megawatt battery storage site now is going to be lithium-ion. But in four years’ time, it might be
it might be a third of the size and it might be twice the amount of energy output.
Vikram (1:20:50) Fantastic. As Jyothi said on an earlier podcast, solar and wind in the UK are a perfect marriage because when the wind is blowing, usually the sun is not shining as much and even the rain is cleaning our modules. So it seems like we’re definitely not short on solar panels. The world’s installed more than a terawatt peak of solar. Prices are reaching 10 cents a watt, is maddening to even comprehend. It hasn’t sunk in with a lot of people. So we’re not short on solar panels, we’re short on people.
And as we come towards the end of this podcast and we try to conclude, ⁓ what kind of people do you want to work with and what is your message to your listeners?
Vince Barnes (1:21:30) you know, I’ve had a fair bit of fun in my life in solar and it’s because I like to work with people who, who really know their onions or even if they don’t, they’re willing to, to, to knuckle down and learn. When I, when I first started with worse all, you know, when we transitioned from worse all to boom, ⁓ I, I suggested to Mark very strongly that we, that we develop our own projects and
eventually after much cajoling, Boom Energy, Boom Power, sorry, are now, ⁓ they’re now developing. That’s their primary model. They are going to be building as well, but you know, the primary model at the moment is development. And ⁓ I think ⁓ that, you know, one of the things I loved about Warsaw was that the people within Warsaw, only had 12, 13 people, but everybody knew what they were meant to do and everybody would
help each other out. It wasn’t a case of, well, I’m procurement and ⁓ I had four or five different hats on, but when I first started on project management and, well, I can’t help with the procurement. That’s nothing to do with me. No, there was only, as you said, Paul Richards and he needed help. So I moved in. And then when Whirlpool became boom and we were going to be doing development, nobody in that team had any knowledge at all about building a solar park, let alone developing it.
And we all sat down and we thought, okay, how are we going to do this? We muddled through it. We looked at how it had to be done and we built the process. And I think BoomPower is probably one of the best developers in terms of their documentation that I’ve seen. And it’s all down to a lady called Sarah. Sarah is absolutely magic. She is so diligent. And then you look at Ed, when he joined BoomPower.
actually joined Wurcel. He was just out of university. He’d had a couple of jobs in bars and stuff, but he came on board and he was willing to learn. And he was put under my wing and he learned how to develop. And now he’s one of the development team in Boom Power, loving it. And then there’s Sam Smith, who was in procurement. He was told Richard’s underling.
And when Paul left, I took over Paul’s role. ⁓ And Sam was under me and he was keen to learn. He learned. And now he’s gone from being procurement ⁓ to design. He’s learned how to design. And I love that idea that, as Mark Hogan says, it’s lovely to have the gray-haired people like me and you. And ⁓ Andrew’s the accountant.
who have a safe pair of hands, who’ve got the knowledge, who know what to do. But it’s also great to have fresh ideas, fresh people coming in because I don’t know it all. I will learn from Sam Smith was, I think he was 17 when he joined Bursall. I think he’s 24, 25 now. But how many 24, 25-year-olds are in charge of a procurement department in a fairly major developer?
And I love that idea that there’s a mix of fresh talent who come through, who are willing to learn. That for me, every day I learn something new and I will learn from anybody. Even ⁓ a three-year-old child can show you something that you maybe forgotten or didn’t know. And you have to be open to learning. So when I work with people, want to work with people who are that open, open-minded, communication and, you know,
Just have that attitude of, see how we’re going to do this and let’s get the job done. I love that spirit of, if you like, the pioneering spirit. Yeah, we’ve got this project. How we going to build it? We’ll work it out. Don’t worry. Let’s just take it on. That’s the kind of people I want to work with.
Vikram (1:25:39) It’s the environment that you create. mentioned Soul Sentry a lot, probably worse or not enough. And to me, yourself and people like Ben Hogan and Steve Ford and Ian Fudge are worse. because there’s this lack of toxicity, people enjoy visiting you when you would need any little thing or even a general conversation about new inverters or whatever. We look forward to coming and seeing you in Sussex and that will be the highlight of our day.
for a nice hub lunch and I’ve noticed, know, people, junior people joined you, you know, like Rizwan, Harry Finnegan, they went on to become very senior people in their fields. Rizwan is CEO at Huawei, Harry’s a very big manager in Stackcraft. And so that’s what seems to be missing on certain other environments. You know, when there is lame culture and toxicity, you tend to have people arguing, but your magic ingredient seems to be the positive environment you tend to nurture.
I certainly have enjoyed working with you. I’ve enjoyed listening to you on this podcast and I hope to listen back and reflect on some of the things you’ve said and have you back on in very near future.
Vince Barnes (1:26:51) Absolutely, and maybe next time I will play the guitar and sing.
Vikram (1:26:57) Fantastic, Vince. Thanks very much for joining us.
Vince Barnes (1:27:00) Thank
you very much Vikram, it’s been an absolute pleasure as always.
You have been listening to the Future of Solar podcast with Vikram Kumar. Thank you very much for listening.
Vikram (00:00) Welcome to our ninth podcast of the future of solar photovoltaics. It’s with absolute pleasure today we are joined by Mr. Dathan Elbridge, an up to 33,000 volt SAP and HV designated person. For those of you who are not in the industry, it means a senior authorized person with a health and safety responsibility. can work in high voltage environments, what we call in the cable industry, medium voltage.
So, you know a very serious person. Dathan, welcome!
Dathan Eldridge (00:33) Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me, Vikram.
Yeah sure. Yeah so I was born on the Isle of Wight in Rye. My mum’s from Ireland. She met my dad on the Isle of Wight when she came over. They decided to move to Southampton when I was one just because there was better opportunities for me growing up. Education and everything like that. ⁓
Vikram (01:26) You said in
the past you moved to Hampshire in the 80s, right?
Dathan Eldridge (01:34) Yeah, 1980, yeah. Yeah, moved over. Then my brother come along three years later. Then we just had a normal childhood. Went to normal schools. I ended up in an all boys school. As my last school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left school. So I had a few jobs, just doing normal stuff.
And I decided to become a chef. So I went to college, started to become a chef, because I always enjoyed working with my hands, being involved. Did that, ended up working in restaurants like TGI Fridays, main brands. I worked my way up into management in those businesses. I got to a point where I thought, I don’t want to be doing this when I’m older.
the hours, unsociable hours, I was 20 at the time. So I decided to look at a different aspect of life and that’s when Vestas started a factory on the Isle of Wight and also down in Wollstone near where I lived. So I applied for a job there as a talent.
Vikram (02:53) You know we want to absolutely talk about that we would absolutely talk about them did you say you went to an old boy school in the previous conversations and that you were a perfect A grade student
Dathan Eldridge (03:05) Yeah,
I was a good student. Yeah, I was a good student. Top set. So I was a prefect for a while till I got caught bunking off by the head teacher and then wasn’t allowed to be a prefect anymore. Yeah, I did wear school, got all the grades you need. Just was never really clear what I wanted to do. Thought about joining the Royal Marines. That didn’t go down that avenue.
So yeah, I just went to college, become a chef because it’s just something I enjoyed doing, working in that high pressure environment. I had a good social life when you’re that young. I paid pretty good money at a time from my age. They me get my first car, give me a bit of freedom.
Vikram (03:57) Did you say you had a sense of
Dathan Eldridge (04:00) Yeah, my dad was an engineer. His dad before him was an engineer. He’s always been in the family. My brother’s also an engineer. He’s gone on to do that. He works on all the railways. He’s in high level management in the railways. So yeah, I did the cheffing for a while. Realized there was no longevity to it. And really thought about what I wanted to do. And like I said, I always enjoyed working my hands. So I looked at…
jobs where I could do that and Vestas was the perfect opportunity for me to move out of the catering industry into an engineering based renewable energy industry. They were pretty well established as a company.
Vikram (04:44) You
enjoy working with your hands, you enjoy problem solving. What about motorbikes and martial arts? Is that something you got involved in? Or is that our stuff?
Dathan Eldridge (04:53) My dad was actually a black belt in karate. used to teach students. He used to taught some of the SBS down in Poole as well. He’s been doing that since the 70s. So he again used to teach me and my brother stuff. Then I looked at doing a of Tae Kwon Do, Wing Chung, stuff like that. He’s always enjoyed the martial arts.
I’m the discipline of it. And obviously, yeah, it’s pretty cool about it. I did that sort of stuff as a kid. And then, yeah, I got into motorbikes when I was 20. I my first bike. didn’t tell my parents. I thought I’d come over and just sort of parked outside the house. too happy. Yeah, sort of been into bikes since then, really. It’s been a massive part of my life.
Vikram (05:50) What was your first motorbike? How old were you when you got your first bike?
Dathan Eldridge (05:54) I was 20, I did a direct access course and I bought a Yamaha R6. So it’s probably one of the fastest 600s pretty quickly on that.
Vikram (06:03) Was
this from your career? it’s from chef.
Dathan Eldridge (06:09) in
the air basically. Yeah so yeah that was my sole transport for a while. Used to ride all weather, winter wasn’t great but yeah it’s become a big passion of mine riding motorbikes, I still do to this day. Go on annual trips
Vikram (06:28) And then Vestas is a Danish company, how did you come across Vestas in Hampshire?
Dathan Eldridge (06:34) So they started a factory on the Isle of Wight producing blades and other components for their turbines. And then they had a smaller facility down in Wollstone producing some of the components, some of the molds and everything. And it had just come up, so I applied for it. They wanted people who didn’t have a lot of experience so they could train them their way. Which is probably why I got the job, to be honest, because I didn’t have any experience at the time.
So yeah, there’s about 40 of us from different aspects, different industries all joined. And I was there for three years to my motorbike accident.
Vikram (07:11) old were you when you joined Vestas? The motorbike accident is a traumatic thing, we want to talk a bit longer about that. how old were you you joined Vestas? You decided you don’t want to be a chef anymore. What did you do at Vestas?
Dathan Eldridge (07:27) So I was a blade technician and a mold technician. So we were responsible for making all the molds and the internal components of the blades. The molds were carbon fiber, just GPR stuff like that where we build them. And then they get sent over to the owner and they’d make the blades out of the molds. And then we’d go over there to repair them, fix them. They had plumbing systems built into them to heat them up.
which is where I got the sort of first taste of plumbing from that point of view. ⁓ Yes, and then we used to build all the internal components that went inside the blades and just learning different aspects of laminating, stuff like that. bit of engineering, structural engineering. Yeah, it’s a good opening to starting a renewable energy system.
industry really for a big player.
Vikram (08:29) Fantastic,
I’ll try to picture your early beginnings, How old were you you joined Vestas and leading to your motorbike issue? you able to give us bit more info? 21, so you’re a really young lad, your life’s just starting.
Dathan Eldridge (08:47) Yeah, I was 21. Yeah, I was 21. 21 when I started there. I worked there for three years. Four years actually, because my mobile case was in 2005.
Vikram (09:01) So Vestas is a huge company, what made you want to leave them? Why did you not want progress with Vestas?
Dathan Eldridge (09:08) I didn’t want to leave. I basically had a near fatal motorbike accident in 2005 and the results of that, the injuries I had, the amount of time I was going to be off work, I sort of was made medically redundant because I was basically off work for three years recovering.
Yeah, I couldn’t go back to where they’re basically. So they obviously couldn’t hold my job open either. And they’re having some structural changes anyway. So they were changing the team dynamics and they’re having some redundancies at that time. So I took voluntary redundancy while I was recovering. had…
I mean, I broke several bones in my leg, my femur, tibia, fibia, done my crucial ligaments in my knee, broke my wrist, my shoulder. I had the fixator frames on for 18 months because I lost three inches of bone in my femur. had one of top specialists in the UK as a consultant. They actually used my medical records for a case study because it was that severe.
so was lucky to survive really i died at the scene and i was revived at a scene i had very
Vikram (10:31) died at the scene.
Dathan Eldridge (10:34) Yeah, I died in scenes from the injuries. So I got revived at the scene. I went straight into the general. Yeah, yeah. And I went straight into the general. I had 36 hours of operations to stabilize me right away. ⁓ Then I went into a coma for three days after that. Stopped I was on life support for three days. My parents were told.
Vikram (10:41) and CPR and all.
Dathan Eldridge (11:04) If I don’t start breathing there’s nothing they can do. But luckily I did.
And then I’ll just start the slow progress of recovering and having to learn to walk again, stuff like that.
But again, a lot of time to think.
Vikram (11:20) How long were you at Vestas leading up to your motorbike accident? As you say, you died at the scene. I’ve trained in emergency first aid but I’ve never performed sleep because for me this is all very frightening. What led to your accident? How did you find yourself in that position?
Dathan Eldridge (11:40) So it was road works. was actually a mile from my house. It wasn’t far. just going home from work and I thought I’d just go round and check my bank balance at the cash machine because you didn’t have apps or anything back then. And there was a load of road works and I was just going through road works and I got a car turned out on the road and I clipped this car and I hit their windscreen and I went about 50 feet in the air, witnesses said.
and I landed on my right leg and that took the full impact and just snapped everything basically. I was fully conscious the whole time until they got me in hospital and I asked to be knocked out basically because of the pain because my femur had a 90 degree bend in my femur and that straightened my leg out at the scene which was painful. Yeah and then I come around probably four or five days later after that out of the coma and everything not realizing how bad I’ve been.
⁓ yeah and then i had probably another 14 operations after that and i ended up with the ⁓ those metal frames you have on your legs to extend your bone by them top and bottom for 18 months so every day i’d wake up i had a little chart where you had to make minor adjustment to the struts with a 10 mil spanner just add a couple millimeters here and there to one keep your legs straight your bones straight but also to
increase the gap. when the bones grow and the growth continued and that took 18 months to heal. And then they removed that. And then I spent another year getting better after that. And I finally went back to work in 2008.
Vikram (13:26) business.
Dathan Eldridge (13:28) I went to chef and first of all, because it’s the easiest job to get. then while sheffing, I went back to college. So I was working in the evenings, sheffing, and I was going to college during the day doing plumbing and electrical. And then I started my own business off the back of that, doing plumbing and electrical work. But while I was at college, I carried on studying.
doing unvented heating systems, solar thermal, just a load of renewable energy technologies I could do back then, heat pumps. So I managed to do a hell of a lot of training and then…
I knew for me to progress into renewables, I needed to be in a larger company. Otherwise, I’ll just be working for myself just doing the
Vikram (14:16) Of course, course, Nathan, you can’t just say you died at a motorbike scene and had a near-death experience and then go talk about plumbing, know, it’s a bit ⁓ of an extreme. So your near-death experience, did you see Jesus? What happened?
Dathan Eldridge (14:28) You
So I remember all, I actually wrote a poem about it afterwards, which got published. So I’m actually a published poet as well. I got contacted a few weeks ago by someone.
Vikram (14:48) way but how to find how to make
Dathan Eldridge (14:51) It’s just online. It’s just, yeah,
it was just published. It’s just, yeah, it’s just published online. Um, it’s just Dave and Elvish, my experience of death. Cause I remember it all. I remember exactly how it felt. Uh, so yeah, I’ll just write a poem about it. Um, it’s probably one of the, the ways I had closure dealing with it all, think. Cause it, it does leave you with a lot of questions going through something like that. But also gave me a massive urge to, uh, to learn.
Vikram (15:20) building
up to all building up to this podcast session you said that their death experience in the past made you want to study physics and quantum mechanics you know that’s a bit of jump
Dathan Eldridge (15:31) Yeah. Well, had this feel. Yeah. I just had this need to strange really that I just wanted to learn as much as I could. And I had, I’ve always had an interest in physics. Um, so I did an A level physics course through Oxford online. Um, so I started learning about general physics and I got into quantum mechanics, stuff like that. And I started reading a lot of quantum physics books, know, Stephen Hawkins, stuff like that, know, brief history of time.
So yeah, I started getting into all that and then I just thought how can I apply this to my actual work life and that’s when I started studying more renewable energy, trying to build a career, which eventually led me to do my engineering degree as well. But I’ve always had an interest in just learning new skills.
Vikram (16:22) Mm-hmm.
⁓ the
Dathan Eldridge (16:38) No,
was a success. Yeah, it was a success. No, I just closed it down in the end. Yeah, I worked for myself doing that. Did renewable energy, heat pumps, stuff like that. But I just wanted to get into the larger stuff and I just knew I couldn’t do that working for myself. Because it wasn’t even a thing.
Vikram (16:58) That’s right.
Dathan Eldridge (17:13) Yeah, so they were a renewable energy company I joined where I just got into doing solar, thermal, photovoltaics, heat pumps. And I was only there briefly and then I got contacted by a recruiter for a job at Solar Century.
Vikram (17:35) How did you make a recovery from this massive injury? know, are you able to walk around? Do you have any health problems? People similar situation to you. They would want to know how’d you make such a fantastic recovery? happened?
Dathan Eldridge (17:48) As soon as I could, I just started training, working out. had gym equipment in the garage. So I just started working out. actually rebuilt my motorbike I crashed on into a track day bike while I was off. I just kept myself occupied. So I was studying and just working on my bike, weight training. I was going for regular physio. I’ve got no cartilage in my right knee. My right leg’s a little shorter because the bone didn’t fit.
grow as much as I wanted to. But other than that, I don’t really have any issues that affect me.
Vikram (18:29) Do you have screws in your knees? Because I have lot of football mates and lot of people that work out on the road, they’ve got issues with their knees and they can’t straighten their knee after they’ve been driving. Do you have problems like that? Or are you completely fine?
Dathan Eldridge (18:39) So
I’m fine, but I’ve got titanium plates, screws. When I was in hospital, was going through an MRI and I had two consultants discuss some whether the screws and plates would be an issue. They had magnets and they were sticking magnets on my framework and stuff. And one said it was fine, the other one wasn’t too sure. So it was a 50-50 chance of me having stuff pulled out of my leg when I went in this big machine, but it turned out okay in the end.
Yeah, I’ve got titanium plates that haven’t got any rods, but just broke and screw him off FEMA when it played in and didn’t work, which is why I ended up with a frame. Um, but yeah, I don’t, I’ll probably need a knee replacement when I’m older, they said, but at the moment I was too young to have that done. It doesn’t affect me. It doesn’t affect my work life. still work 50, 60 hours a week. Yeah. On site.
Vikram (19:35) You’re fine, obviously I’ve seen you around sites and places and you get about a bit in terms of travelling. I calculated in 2005 ⁓ accident during your Vestas departure you may have been about 25, 26 years old so you’re still a young lad and then you seem quite keen to talk about your interviews with Solar Technologies which became British Gas Solar, now Centrica and Solar Sentry. What happened with these interviews? Why did you join Solar Sentry and not British Gas?
Dathan Eldridge (20:04) So for me, British Gas, I was offered a job, same sort of role, just their installation team. And then I had the same South Century. But for me, South Century felt more like a business I could be involved in, where British Gas at the time, I just felt more like I’ll just disappear into the ether, I’ll just be an employee number. So I just had the choice to choose a better company. I thought it would suit my career needs, which was South Century.
And I I went for the interview. Um, during that interview, there was a guy called Dave Bailey who was going to head up the commercial teams. His role was available and they said I’d be better suited for the technical role on all the commissioning side and the O &M, EPC stuff than just being an installation engineer. Cause of my background and the training I’ve done in the education I’ve done to that point.
basically.
Vikram (21:05) 2010 right well that’s two thousand years after you accidentally you started with Southern Century
Dathan Eldridge (21:12) Yeah, yeah, roughly, yeah, just like 2009, yeah, joined. It’s that century.
Vikram (21:19) And then the bridge, this was the time they were working on a very famous bridge, Blackfriars Bridge I believe.
Dathan Eldridge (21:25) Yeah, so when I started there, they were still doing like large residential projects, some commercial stuff. Obviously they did Cambridge, the five megawatt sofa on there. Black Fires was a couple of years after I joined. I was involved in that, just on the commissioning and working on the, you know, help with the EPC stuff and then the O &M after that. So yeah, I was lucky to get involved in some of that.
the larger projects they were doing because they were sort of quite ahead in the marketplace, so essentially at the time. So they had some really good stuff I could get my teeth into really and expand my knowledge and that’s where a lot of the manufacturing training come in. Getting exposure to that, learning all the new technologies. And just just, and I just carried on learning myself, learning more about the physics, the background.
the technologies or did additional courses I could do. I’ve always said to people in the industry who want to advance themselves, don’t wait for a company to train you because they often only do it if it’s a financial benefit to the business. ⁓ So you can spend years somewhere and just not really gain much knowledge or experience unless you push yourself really.
Vikram (22:53) Absolutely. 2010 and until 2016, so about six years, you joined SolarCenter two years before I started visiting them on behalf of Leonie, which is student now. And so you spent six years and four months as a commissioning engineer and a field service engineer and an asset manager. You say on your LinkedIn, you spend some time obviously on the Blackfriars Bridge, which was very prestigious at the time, but also Bentley and some of the last solar farms.
What were you seeing? during that time, quality was more of a focus because everything was new and we spent a lot of time with Guy Atherton and other people really meticulously looking at details. You were coming in towards the back end of the project. What was your impression of what you used to see then on sites during the commissioning?
Dathan Eldridge (23:44) The build quality was always good. There was always that blend of the electrical regulations, making sure everything that there to that being private networks. ⁓ And then obviously the technologies, make sure that component selection, because it was sort of fairly new back then. You didn’t really know how certain aspects or components would stand over time to where we do now.
You know, certain things you just wouldn’t install because it’s not going to last. They always are up against crazy deadlines trying to because of the feed-in tariffs and everything back then. They didn’t get a site generated by certain data, end up with massive fines or. So there was always massive pressure, even on the commercial side. So it was always pretty hectic. The sites were.
Obviously terrible with mud and working conditions. So yeah, we were brought in to QA, obviously commission everything, get everything online working, get the site generating so they could basically hit their deadlines. And they would feed back to the engineering team. Obviously it’d be under O at that point as well. wasn’t really…
O and back then like it is now. Contractually, there’s all these tasks you have to do every year annually. That wasn’t the case back then. was more keep the asset running as best as you could, fix anything that needed fixing, do the maintenance that was required, ⁓ and just reactive more than planned back then. It’s that the O and sort of aspect developed over the years to form a lot more contractual stuff, I think.
rather than just building these sites and fixing them as they went to the client took them over basically.
Vikram (25:45) You say on your LinkedIn profile during this hectic six years from 2010 till 2016 that you’ve commissioned over a thousand systems, domestic, commercial and large scale. What proportion of that is large scale?
Dathan Eldridge (26:04) Probably a big part of it to be honest. ⁓ Because yeah, the slow century sort of pushed into that era. ⁓ They still did a bit of residential. They still did a bit of commercial, but it was mainly ground mounts. ⁓ Some of the larger stuff, know, 50 megawatt sites. And then it obviously moved into Europe. So there’s some sites over there we went and did QA and TA on. ⁓ Commissioning. So yeah, it’s probably about 60 % ground mount I’d say.
Vikram (26:43) the So anyway, between 2012 and 2016. So that was the first UK boom. We seem to be moving towards another one. In the meantime, you did some O &M engineering. What does that mean, O &M engineering for Soul Sentry?
Dathan Eldridge (27:01) So obviously all this equipment has manufacturers recommendations for maintenance. So that’s your first protocol, you do your general maintenance, but then as these sites age, they start developing issues due to technologies, equipment selection, sometimes even down to the physical materials that they’re
The equipment was made from specially PV modules. So there’s a big learning curve of all the issues that could come with an agent site from inverters degrading, communication issues causing shutdowns, fan failures, moisture from subs flooding, modules having PID like potential induced degradation, which can seriously impact the performance of a module.
you know, crack cells from installation because people didn’t really understand back then. You couldn’t walk on the modules or…
Vikram (28:10) Yeah.
Dathan Eldridge (28:11) handle them too roughly because that sort of all sort of grew from the early days to when they were starting getting like wildly soaps not performing the way it should be, not doing what they’re designed to do. So the whole aspect of that sort of led into, once again, I started studying a lot in my own time of about modules and the materials, PRD and other stuff that can affect the modules performance, other stuff can affect.
in various performance, transformers, harmonics and everything like that. And then from that grew from our technical experience, we started developing aspects of techniques and procedures.
sort of testing we could go and do on a site to establish what was wrong with it. And then from that point, we’d be able to start tackling the liquidated damages the business was receiving for underperformance, which was quite high at the time. At some sites, we managed to reduce it quite significantly. ⁓
Vikram (29:20) Absolutely. One of the positive things about the podcast is, know, we want everyone to learn and participate and go towards a positive direction and avoid anything that might be, you know, confidential, but at the same time, we don’t want to learn lessons from the past. And what I’ve learned here, myself, is whenever you would go to Solicentri site, it would be one of the cleanest sites you’ll come across, despite the equipment, quality, bad quality, average quality.
⁓ the ⁓
work on it like I said it’s park.
Dathan Eldridge (30:23) They had good contractors who grew as South Century grew. So from the early day, mean, our construction sort of built some of really early sites for South Century. And so they were consistently using the same contractors. So everyone was learning as the years went by what work, what didn’t work, getting better at their jobs, basically. And the projects just got larger.
So yeah, I feel it’s just down to using consistently good contractors. Obviously design aspects, they knew what didn’t work and what did, so they’d implement changes every design to improve the sites. I always selected the top tier equipment inverters that had good manufacturer support. Top tier modules, framework, again, where we just get the support from the manufacturer, we go and do specific training.
for looking after the equipment because they often didn’t have people in the UK and it was financially viable for us to be doing it instead of them. So we’ve become a service partner for some of these main manufacturers. So we’ve grown our knowledge on that side as well as just the actual EPC side and the build side. So we’d have a really good clear image of how to look after these sites and we’d relay.
back to the engineering team from an O &M point of view as well, like how to improve it so it’s easier to look after during O &M. What equipment would last, what wouldn’t, stuff that was taking a lot more maintenance than it should do because of equipment selection. So there’s just feedback and reviewing everything that had been done previously and just using consistently good contractors, basically.
Vikram (32:18) the ⁓
Dathan Eldridge (32:33) So it was one, knowledgeable, two, presence. They always had senior management on site, good project managers. They were never project managed from an office.
Vikram (32:48) Right, right, right. So that’s a big thing now because everyone’s working remotely. It’s hard to do that now. Yeah.
Dathan Eldridge (32:54) Good supervisors. Obviously everyone uses agency, so even down to agency guys, having decent agency guys and managing them properly. But yeah, it was mainly down to their management really. Yeah, and Phil. Yeah, Kevin and Phil being on site all the time, overseeing and working out in the field as well, not just sat in an office.
Vikram (33:21) I have to guess Kevin and Phil you mean as an Aaron right Kevin Kylie and Phil Deadman, right?
Dathan Eldridge (33:25) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, great guys, always, always there, you know. And cared what they did, as you know, they really cared. That’s another massive factor. You’ve got to take some pride in what you do.
Yeah, and then I essentially supported them as well. They sort of worked hand in hand really, they sort of support each other and their businesses both grew because of
Vikram (33:49) Nathan,
entire high streets have been shut down by the Covid and the solar industry is no different. A lot of businesses have changed or gone under or stopped doing solar themselves. You’re such a senior person with this whole century. I rarely came across you at that time because you were on the commissioning and on them side of things I was more on the pre-construction side. But I found later how vital you were to the business and you were working more hours than you had.
in a successful business, what made you want to leave and start your own business? At what point did you drive around in your vehicle and thought, I want to leave sales entry? Why would you even think that?
Dathan Eldridge (34:32) So for me, the way O &M is done generally as a business, I don’t think it’s very successful packaging everything together. So I did write a new business plan model for O &M at Soar Century, which they did sort of implement a bit, but they also had, they were looking at selling the business at a time, so they had a sort of shift in
what they wanted to do with the business. So O wasn’t really something they wanted to grow. It was more of a necessity that had to be done because of the EPC side of the projects needed two year warranty O So after we…
Yeah.
Vikram (35:20) the the
But what did you think? you thought you’re getting squeezed and then I’m gonna start my own business. Was it as simple as that or was it a more detailed?
Dathan Eldridge (35:54) That was a similar, really, just thought, you know, we could take our knowledge. We’re sort of a company within Soar Century, the O team, the business within a business. ⁓ So we thought we could just do it for ourselves, basically, take our knowledge, our experience. I left Soar Century, think it was a Wednesday. I was on site Thursday working for myself. There’s literally no, no in between.
left one day, I was working for myself the next day. We originally just carried on being field service support engineers, doing O ⁓ tasks, environment and stuff like that, because of our backgrounds. And then the business slowly, rapidly grew into where it is today, a sort of fucking EPC.
specialists where we can support all the R &M’s with everything they need to do. We can do all the repairing, revamping, quite a lot of hot voltage works. We also do EV charges, a lot of commercial and we still do electrical contracting. We rewired a gym not so long ago in London. So we’ve always just kept, I didn’t want to sort of, I always wanted a business where we
be open to anything really and just see where it took us. ⁓
Vikram (37:50) You seem a bit silent about the whole thing. What’s your, without getting into anything negative, weirdly legal, from you, you join almost as apprentice, you get all of these qualifications, you do ⁓ more mega-wars than most people have ever built in their lives in terms of commissioning and O What’s your reflections about the whole 10 years of experience, the 10 years of life you’ve given up because with your accident, you said you’ve gone your outlook on life. What’s your outlook on whole century?
Dathan Eldridge (38:21) For me, they always had that vibe of being like a kind of Apple, Google. they’re predominantly, you know, a lot of the founding members, you know, they really care about the environment. That’s always been their major push. It was nice to work in a company that wasn’t just purely financially driven. They were trying to solve a problem.
tackle climate change, but also had a lot of opportunity to learn and to try new things. I worked with some amazing people. One of the guys I worked with, George, he was in his sixties when I started, but he had such a career previous where he commissioned nuclear submarines. He worked on every aspect of electrical engineering and just having those few years with him, getting his knowledge passed down to me.
I was invaluable. Learned a lot on the communication side with him. So yeah, I just had the opportunity to work with some really good people to learn a lot. I got a lot of chances to work on a lot of stuff that you don’t normally get to work on. And that also, I went into Europe doing stuff, Africa.
If we thought we could do something, they’d let us have a go, basically. If we could solve a problem, they’d let us try and fix it instead of just subbing it out, which we often did. It really annoys me when I can’t fix something.
Vikram (39:58) ⁓ and ⁓
uh… from uh… various different people some of our duty of the wishing massive orders because they are really well peter train well over really enthusiastic people all mentioned they’ve just to keep people uh… you know happy but you’ll get really young people are very very clever you know the system which matters and you know what i thought that you can go to a prototype and i know what you mean you would always be trying new things and indian you know we’ve found it you know something we could save a million pounds on
going to aluminium cables and that came about just as a bit of fun R &D that we had agreed with Solentri.
Dathan Eldridge (41:01) Yeah, exactly. And just being able to influence O to a point where you could have a big impact on budgets. ⁓ I was in charge of the liquidated damages for a while at Center Century, producing that. So I did a lot on warranty claims with module manufacturers, PID. Did a lot of research development on that. A lot of drone development, thermal surveys.
infrared cameras, just developing skills and techniques to and testing with all of your curve testers to get a successful warranty claim with these manufacturers because they try anything not to give you a warranty claim ⁓ and even down to
Vikram (41:48) I understand it’s essential sometimes but it’s not a nice thing to to do claims of liquid damage or warranties it gets very negative and nasty very quickly. Did you fly any drones yourself? I know people I won’t mention their names some people have been in hot water for crashing 20 grand drones. you get involved with stuff like that yourself?
Dathan Eldridge (42:10) I didn’t fly any. just worked on the process of taking that information and using it in the field. Because we used the drone company, they gave us a load of data and then I found I was spending three days out in the field just trying to find the information they provided, the modules. It wasn’t accurate enough. So I worked a lot with the company at times to develop a system where you could just hand it to a field engineer and I could go straight to the
issue, fix it or sort out, get the information you needed. You know, working on algorithms, software development, you know, and using the luminescence testing at night to find the difference between PID and some other issue the modules having because you get a lot of inverted clipping on some of the larger sites because they’ve already been designed and it’s
It can be misinterpreted as an issue with the modules PID because it gives a similar thermal pattern on the camera. So it’s understanding that the way a solar farm works as well and interpreting that data and just knowing that’s not a physical issue with the modules. It’s just a design aspect of the site because it’s, you know, the environment is oversized to their output because of the lifetime of the project and even still generate.
you know, 10 megawatts in 20 years. So it’s having all that information and understanding. Because once you mention PRD to a client, you know, it’s sort of going to have big implications because it’s sort of your modules are dying basically.
Vikram (43:56) What is the idea of induced degradation? How do you get potential induced degradation? What do mean by potential? Is it voltage?
Dathan Eldridge (44:06) Yeah, so basically you have the electrons not flowing the regular paths. It’s down to material selection sometimes. Could be down to grounding. So the electrons flow out of the cells into the framework, into the ground basically, and the module becomes dead. You can negatively ground a site.
to negate that to a point, but then you introduce loads of other health and safety issues because you can’t pick up string faults. So you might have string faults you’re unaware of which can cause fires or electrical safety hazards.
Every module get POD at some point. It’s just natural. It’s just the ones that are manufactured to the best.
performance with the best material selection choice tend to have a greater risk of getting PID sooner than others.
It’s only so manufacturers as well as I haven’t seen it on. So this is a.
Vikram (45:20) Anything to do with modules. Anything to do with modules huge because a lot of people don’t realize how big solar farms are. can have solar farms that are a thousand acres and a lot of it can be taken up by modules and it looks simple but then you walk and you walk and you walk and it’s repetitive, huge bits of equipment and PID is a big thing. I know that myself from previous experiences, if I try to summarize it,
the cells don’t the electrons don’t flow you got photons from light turn into electrons they don’t flow through the solar cells like you have in a calculator like you haven’t sold the panels they don’t flow down the intended buzz bars they start to leakers to ground ground as in earthing so they’ll start flowing into the earth instead of through the buzz bars is that what you mean
Dathan Eldridge (46:14) Yeah, they migrate out through the framework. And then you essentially just get dead cells. They just stop working. it looks, luminescence testing looks like an X-ray. So you’ll see a module with just loads of dark cells where they’re just not running, basically. And it always generally starts at negative end of the string and it sort of works its way up the modules. So the first module is always the worst.
And over time, it just gets worse and worse because of the way the sites have strung and everything like that. And just the way it physically works. can reverse it by putting reverse current in at night. Some new inverters do that at night anyway to mitigate this problem. We installed some anti-PID systems on some older sites to reverse it.
but you’ll never get rid of it. And every mortal will eventually suffer it to some extent as they degrade.
Nah, it’s okay.
No, not really. It’s just a performance. You can lose 30 % of your site, basically performance wise. It just pulls down your performance of your string. Basically your output. So you might have an underperformance site, but you’ve got no insulation faults or anything like that. You could have an issue like that, which is completely, you can’t see it through your naked eye. You have to have a thermal camera.
and drone surveys to pick this up.
Vikram (48:00) And when you have a dead cell, you got Bipostar diodes, right? So the module can still keep working apart from the cell that’s died with its electrons leaking to Earth. So the module still is functional, you might have a 60 cell or 72 cell module, might lose a couple of cells. That’s what you mean.
Dathan Eldridge (48:21) You’re testing, you have like 20 volts on the module instead of 38. Because every cell is generally 0.6 of a volt. But where you’ve lost a lot of it. So your voltages are down on your strings. That’s where your performance losses come from, basically.
And then I
Vikram (48:45) How does negatively grounding stop PID? That’s really fascinating for me.
Dathan Eldridge (48:54) Cause it’s, ⁓ cause it’s floating system. Generally I’d have to look it up now.
Vikram (49:01) I think a lot of people don’t know, there’s things we can research and follow up later on but yeah, other than negative grounding, it’s an interesting area. And floating means it’s not grounded at all, which makes you feel a bit scared from a safety point of view. Why is negatively grounding dangerous from your perspective? What is the risk? We don’t need to understand all the science, all the boffinry, even the boffins don’t understand it to be honest. But we need to appreciate what we’re dealing with. That’s all we need to do.
Dathan Eldridge (49:29) So negatively grounded sites, you get a high leakage current on earth. So I’ve seen on some central sites, up to seven amps on an earth, just through leakage. Can’t be avoided. So you have an aspect of safety from that point of view. But because you’ve got it negatively grounded, you then can’t pick up individual string faults because the whole thing’s grounded. So you can’t see if a string’s gone down to earth.
as well because it’s being masked by the the grounding so you lose all your individual string monitoring which again you can have strings out which you won’t know unless you physically go and check instead of the monitoring telling you you’ve lost two strings in the combiner box and there’s also a fire aspect as well so it has
Yeah, so you might reduce the impact PRD has on your modules or getting PRD, but you’ve introduced a nother realm of issues to do with RF in and string leakage, string monitoring. So you can have strings out that you’re not even aware of.
Vikram (50:53) Corrosion, what about galvanic corrosion? What about corrosion? Yeah, you’re saying Chris. ⁓
Dathan Eldridge (51:00) Yeah, you also increase the risk of that through galvanic action, which is big problem on sites. People using the wrong washer and the bolts rust. Little things like that. That’s not just the UK. I’ve seen that in many different countries. It’s sort of an industry flaw, think. Just picking the wrong, dissimilar materials. Not understanding, know, selecting the wrong washer can have that much impact.
especially on a groundwork because it’s just replicated across the whole site.
Vikram (51:33) the if providing the string craigs cables are not broken, you can have seven amps flowing out of the ID or whatever that the things we don’t really understand, but we know it’s happening. And then so you got current flowing through two different metals, you basically made a battery that know, corrode
33 kilograms of steel or 8 kilograms of lead, I don’t know the numbers exactly. It’s a big thing in the transmission industry where they have to put in sacrificial anodes or cathodes because you don’t want pylons collapsing, all railway tunnels collapsing because of galvanic actions. It’s very, important thing. But what about the hard-drawn copper, the bare copper that you bury in the soil? Do you have any experience of that?
a risk of the earth corroding? Isn’t the structure already providing an earth in some description?
Dathan Eldridge (52:35) It is, but it’s not under the same potential, which is why they bond everything. Because you can touch one table and you can touch another, but it might have different potential. that’s why they have to bond it. It’s just about electrical safety from that point of view as part of regulations as well.
Vikram (52:55) right? The next person in our thing that is a heavy area in itself. But now let’s talk about DES. You start DES, Dynamic Energy Solutions. You leave under a tumultuous time. It’s all essentially you’re such a key person. So are your colleagues who are working on them, such as Mr. Liam Hicks. You have these visions of starting your own company. When you said the first day you were allowed, you were working in your own business on site.
It’s been about over four years now. tell us about your business. Dynamic Energy Solutions. Just to make sure I’m saying it right. What is your business? What were your first visions and where do you stand from them now four years later?
Dathan Eldridge (53:35) Yeah.
So when we left, we just saw ourselves as support services in the industry, using our inverted manufacturer training, our specialist knowledge, just to fill the gaps, because a lot of companies, they don’t have the capacity.
to have people skilled in their team because of the cost. Or they just don’t have the manpower as well to do a lot of the O &M or reactive maintenance are required. So we filled that gap initially, just supporting the larger O &Ms with just normal O &M work and for our manufacturer repairs, maintenance, and then high voltage stuffs.
and transformers, switch gear.
actually maintenance. We started that aspect and then we started hiring people, building the internal management team bigger, growing what the company could do. So we moved in commercial, solar, commercial EV, grew the services we were already providing more into an EPC aspect. So moving into repair and revamping and then
taking on full EPC work as well and just building our knowledge further with more employees, more key personnel in the office to deliver larger works and we’ve had rapid growth because of it because it’s such a need for it in the industry at the moment. So even though we left during when Covid happened, it didn’t really affect us to be honest as a business.
We’ve been doubling or tripling in size every year financially as a business. Teams been growing.
Vikram (55:40) and very hard working, too hard working if you ask me and you make time for yourself as well but you know you use social media very effectively because it was hard to ignore what you guys were doing. would delete LinkedIn and install it back to see what your next day’s posts were and here we are we have these funds going through their own issues because they didn’t return money back to shareholders and they’ve had
exploding transformers. Again, let’s not get into anything confidential. And next minute, everyone’s moaning about what’s going on and getting their lawyers involved. And then we see a post from Dynamic Energy Solutions or DES from you with motorbikes considering a motorbike accident. I’m bit shocked you still have motorbikes and suddenly you have these transformers being craned into place and everything’s fine. So one minute you’re installing a domestic EV charger next minute you’re
you’re lowering these massive transformers and the demand for your services grows and grows and grows because you guys are very ballsy and you go and get the job done. So when you say repowering and a lot of people say repowering, some might have a desktop on pain and say they repower because they draw some solar cells, but you guys are actually repowering high voltage equipment. So this is what I mean when I say you undersell yourselves. So how did this happen? When you Solar Century, did people start panicking and start calling you to change?
load of transformers? happened exactly? Don’t mention any sites, any names, but tell us like what, are you solving these kinds of problems? How can you just go on site and replace a burning building into a brand new transformer?
Dathan Eldridge (57:17) So we had, we also had a lot of contacts when we left. People knew us anyway, because we’d been in the industry for quite a long time. And we’ve always tried to react as fast as we can. If there’s an issue, we least try to get there the same day or next day. And then we just formulate a plan to fix the issue. I think a lot of our experience on a lot of these sites where we’ve been involved in the build or R &M, so we knew these sites pretty well anyway.
So it’s just sort of made it easy for us to go in and fix a problem or find a solution to solve the issue.
Vikram (57:55) ⁓ the ⁓
You know the equipment manufacturers, you know who built them. So when completely random new people come in and panicking, at least when they go to you, they could get a 10 year encyclopedia on certain sites.
Dathan Eldridge (58:38) Yeah, and it’s just having that experience with the older equipment, the older comms because integrating new equipment with old is sometimes tricky, especially on the comms side. So just having a real good core foundation understanding of how these sites were built. Because a lot of the manufacturers aren’t around anymore. So you just don’t have the technical support, but we have that knowledge. Yeah, we were service partners for a lot of the major companies still are now taking on new server partnerships.
with the key players today. Yeah, we’re familiar with a lot of the old Switch gear, Transformers, lot of the problems they had. So we just applied that knowledge and just built our own client base. And we’ve been successful at doing that because we tried doing it obviously as fast as we can, but to best of our ability in delivering and getting everything back online.
quickly as possible really and it’s but also a high standard as well. ⁓
which is why I think repowering has been very good for us. We always do it with understanding of these sites need to be looked after. They’re going to be around another 10, 20 years. The contracts are going to be so they’re going to be around probably even longer than that. So when it comes to doing a repowering, revamping design and everything, we think about all aspects, not just how quickly can we do this? What equipment can we shove in there? Is it going to make O life difficult?
to go and increase costs down the line for the client. we look at the whole picture really, as well as delivering it on time and budget to a high standard. And it’s going to be a massive industry like you said, hold sites.
Vikram (1:00:27) Absolutely, absolutely.
Absolutely and you’re working for some large funds, know, let’s not get into any any legals etc. But how do you convince such big companies to go with you for repowering and tell us what what is repowering and what is rebound revamping? What do you understand it as as the difference between the two?
Dathan Eldridge (1:00:53) So revamping is where you’re just improving a site, changing some components to.
generally make it safer or just increase your performance just by changing the modules maybe. Could be a sign of repamping. Reparing is when you’re almost doing taking it back to the framework and you’re doing everything from that. Maybe new modules, new environs and that involves all the restring of the site, all the main DCs, new ACs. It’s practically like a build almost. ⁓
bit more complex because you’re dealing with the cables and everything that are already in the grounds. You you’re walking into a site that’s 10 years old, it might have massive health and safety issues, it’s had fires, half the site doesn’t run. It’s a lot of cable faults. The communication’s sketchy, it doesn’t work. Because often when you need repower, you don’t change the comms, you just…
You use what’s there, just use different cores in a cable, but if that cable’s been faulty, you often find that you have problems at the end where you’re going around fault finding and trying to fix comms issues to get the site on, communicating. it’s dealing with all those. So there’s a blend of our own experience, EPC knowledge where we can go in and just do it, but we can also deal with any problems that crop up. ⁓
We will also do substation fires, we will replace complete subs. We’ll take out non-supported and vertical manufacturers and put in a new one that’s supported. then it’s again, marrying up an old site with new equipment, taking into account all the new regulations, G99, G100, stuff like that. So it’s understanding the bigger picture.
also you’ve got to be careful because you might put an inverter in that can produce way more than the original so then you’ve got to look at curtailing that environment, how to set that up so you don’t go over the original export agreement. So it’s a bit more in depth than just an EPC project and I think that’s why we enjoy doing them, it’s a bit more challenging. We get to use our experience and knowledge a lot more
Vikram (1:03:23) Absolutely. We’re this podcast now and because you’re so busy, we’re doing it remotely. I prefer to do face to face with you if I can in the future. we have to remember, we’re not retired from the industry. We are still very much in the deep end, in the mud, doing things. I’m almost working seven days now with my kids’ sports and work even on the weekends because…
To honest, I am a solar geek and I like electrical engineering myself and I’ve been doing it 20 plus years and I enjoy it. That’s why I don’t take breaks sometimes because if someone gives me something I find fun, I’ll work the weekend if I have to. So you are doing the same right now, but we have to take time aside. But there’s some things I want to mention like PID we need to come back to in the future. Negative grounding we need to come back in the future. Repowering inverters we need come back in the future.
substations and we need to come back in the future because you’re working so often we need to sometimes sit back and take stock but you know I’m a bit conscious as well about the signal quality as well and you know what I want to ask you as we try to wrap this up for this evening you know you’ve had four and a half years with four years and three months with Dez you are still busy I’m doing projects with you right now in fact we’ve done a repowered one you did some other stuff yourself
I’ve got things to do for you tonight and tomorrow morning, which I’m conscious of, I just save energy for. But let’s not get our studies and our nerdiness distract from our social skills on the bigger picture, which is you are in business with four years plus. You are a success. You have to look after your health as we all do. What is the future for Des? If you talk to your future self, your listeners, your customers, your former colleagues.
How do you see what you’ve done now evolving into the future business that’s Dynamic Energy Solutions? If you want to talk a bit about that before I wish you a good Sunday evening.
Dathan Eldridge (1:05:26) Yeah, so we’re just going to expand on what we’re doing really. I want to grow the commercial team so we can deliver more commercial projects. I want to grow the EPC team so we can take on larger projects. mean, right now we’re substation replacement, switch gear replacement. We have a build. We’re just finishing a repairing project. We’ve got a couple of rooftops we’re doing. We’re doing an airport.
So we’re doing a lot. I just want to be able to make them more of their own section within the business. Instead of the team doing everything, I’d have specific teams to do certain aspects. And obviously, Repan and Revamp is going to be a massive sector. Yeah, and then obviously we’ve got other things going on in the background where we’re just scaling up the business from management side.
money way, money sides with investment. There is there’s something else we’re starting, which is going to feed into what we’re doing. So there’s will be a supporting company to this new business, which I can’t really talk about, but that will come out at some point down the road. So it’s been a quiet rollercoaster. It’s been rapid growth.
And I’ll just say again, because there’s so much happening. So many builds. They start to get an older. So we’re just end up supporting the industry. Like we’ve been trying to do from day one, really just on a bigger scale and maybe build some of our own projects one day. We’re we’re own.
Bye, silly.
Vikram (1:07:12) Absolutely, really fantastic. You know, I just want to say, you you do really undersell yourself. You have to take care of your health a bit more. You know, be careful with the motorbikes, you know, because you are straightforward, your partner, business partners are straightforward. They get down to the business and get the work done. And that’s what inspires a lot of people in an environment where people play politics, talk a lot of nonsense.
you go and get the job done, don’t shout about it so much, you’re very active on social media, but it’s more to do with the industry stuff, you’re not all the time saying, me, me, me, you’re actually doing stuff and actions speak louder than words and you can see that in very, very senior people joining you and other people wanting to work with you. So I want to say congratulations for what you’ve achieved so far and you’ve got your daughter to pick up soon and we’ve got work to do together in the morning.
Dathan Eldridge (1:08:27) Yeah.
I’d just like to say your company is only as good as your team behind you really. I’ve had some fantastic people like Brett Baber working for me. He played a massive part in building the business. Obviously moved on to Bear Electric, but we’re in contact working with each other. I’ve got a great management team, great guys in the field, and you can’t do this on your own. So we treat everyone the way we want to be treated. Coming from a tools helps, think.
We won’t do anything. wouldn’t. We’re not prepared. Yeah, we’re asked. We’re asked people to do something, but if we’re prepared to do ourselves, you know, we wouldn’t get people doing something that we wouldn’t do. And we treat people fairly. And I think that shows and that’s why people want to work with us and work for us. think. Like you said, you know, just being humble.
Vikram (1:09:24) ⁓
the sure we don’t slip anything that we’re not supposed to and we haven’t so far and you know we’ve got hundreds of burning questions to ask you and ⁓ we’re in our one hour and 11 minutes I know you need to your door up in about four minutes so thank you very much for joining this podcast I will listen back
Several times I think deeply about the things you’ve said and I will have follow-up questions. So, thanks very much, Nathan.
Dathan Eldridge (1:09:58) I thank you, it’s been great. Thanks for the opportunity.
Vikram (00:02) Welcome again to the Future of Solar Photovoltaics podcast. We’re getting enormous interest from our colleagues in the industry, now being listened to in 43 countries. Today I have the absolute pleasure of welcoming Mr. John Davis, a good friend of mine from the industry, a chartered mechanical engineer, 20 years experience in the energy business, and CEO of 2 degrees Kelvin. John, welcome.
John Davies 2DK (00:28) Thank you, Vikram. Very nice to be here and a real honor to be part of this growing podcast.
Vikram (00:37) Fantastic, John. And going with the theme of our earlier podcasts, know, people are what makes this industry exciting to be in and it’s what gets us through the good and bad times. Tell us a bit about yourself. We spoke in the past that you were born in Tasmania in Australia.
John Davies 2DK (00:55) Yes, born in Hobart, Tasmania in 1981. My mum’s, my mum is from Australia. My father actually emigrated on the 10 Bob boats over when he was 15 and they met in high school. So yeah, very, very proud actually of my Australian heritage. And then moved back to Pembrokeshire in Southwest Wales in the early eighties, where my father set up.
Ostwell Limited, ⁓ a civil company down there to service the oil and gas sector in the Port of Milford Haven.
Vikram (01:33) John, what’s a ten bob boat?
John Davies 2DK (01:35) Yeah, so I think back at the time they were trying to encourage people to emigrate out to Australia and to get British citizens out there. So 10 bob, 10 pounds cost you to jump on a ship and to sail around the world to sunnier climes. So yeah, my father emigrated with his mother when he was 15 on the 10 bob boat.
Vikram (02:02) Fantastic and how long did you spend in Tasmania? It’s an exotic place. Are you able to give us a picture?
John Davies 2DK (02:08) Yeah, it’s a beautiful ⁓ state of Australia. It’s a small island just off the southeast of mainland Australia. ⁓ Beautiful country and Hobart in particular is a lovely city, ⁓ overlooked by Mount Wellington and with a ⁓ river running right through the city or a big estuary really. ⁓ So I didn’t spend a huge amount of time there, but I’ve been lucky enough to go back there a few times.
with my family over the years, over the decades. So I have a lot of family down there and dotted around Australia as well.
Vikram (02:44) And you mentioned earlier, you an Australian mother and a Welsh father. How are they meeting in Tasmania?
John Davies 2DK (02:50) Well, they met in high school and they got on there. So quite a lot of my father’s family from Southwest Wales and Pembrokeshire in particular emigrated out before he went there. So we’ve got roots in both places really. And then we emigrated back to Pembrokeshire, back for my father’s career, essentially to set up a civil company down in the port of Milford Haven there.
So yeah, still fond memories of Australia. Would love to go back there and do some proper traveling when time allows over the next few years, perhaps. I’ll bring my own family down there.
Vikram (03:33) And what persuaded your parents to emigrate back to Wales when there’s so much to do in Australia?
John Davies 2DK (03:42) I think my father’s roots and older brother were here and he talked about the boom in industrial development, particularly around oil refinery construction and the development of the port in Milford Haven. So that drew him back. He was a civil engineer and he then went on to start his own civil engineering business in the early 80s.
And that business is still operational today, 40 years on. So that was the draw really. And since the original oil refinery down there, Texaco, on the Pembroke side of the Haven, there’s been three or four other refineries down there. And subsequently, since they’ve been at the end of their life, there’s been a new surgence of LNG terminals.
The marina and the haven down there is quite a vibrant place. There’s plans for considerable offshore floating wind farms and lots of infrastructure projects going on down there. It’s still bustling in terms of industry and ⁓ development and progression down there. Yeah, still keep very close to my family down there.
I’m very close in touch, still sit on the board of Ostwell as my father’s now since retired.
Vikram (05:14) And Ostwell means Australian Wells, right?
John Davies 2DK (05:18) Yeah, I mean, just a play on words really, just a combination of the two areas. yeah, the name stuck over the years, Australia, Welsh, Ostwell.
Vikram (05:29) Welles is an important story because of the coal miners, the oil and gas industry. You said before you’ve got more than 20,000 or 25,000 followers on social media, especially on LinkedIn, a business networking platform. How do you balance being a known figure in renewables and especially in solar sector with sitting on the board of an oil and gas civil company?
John Davies 2DK (05:52) Yeah, that’s an interesting question, Vikram. Thank you. Listen, I mean, the heritage of oil and gas has got deep roots and we’re all still incredibly reliant on all of the different products and materials that that particular industry produces. I think there’s a…
⁓ You know global trend towards moving away from them in the most part particularly for energy generation. You know my my own background is not only with with Ostwell and ⁓ you know servicing the oil and gas industry but actually some of my first more poignant roles in engineering is is in coal fired power stations and oil refineries steel works all all heavy industry so.
I’ve really had to transition away from, you know, fossil fuels, but, you know, knowing that they are still important and the transition needs to be done correctly. I think there’s real big moves for the oil and gas to transition towards hydrogen. And that’s a real natural transition for them so that they just don’t shut the doors. But we have to educate and pull them along with us. We’re trying to…
speak to some of these more traditional fossil fuel related companies ⁓ and install renewable assets to power parts of the industry to make them more efficient. So I think, yeah, it’s something that plays on my mind. I’m proud of the time I’ve spent in the solar industry and what I’ve achieved so far. I’m really proud of the
the solar businesses that I’ve developed ⁓ and the future of solar going forward. Yeah. So there still is, I suppose, a ⁓ few routes still in the oil and gas sector, but I think we’re trying to actually encourage the transition and diversification of Ostwell as an example to include solar in their repertoire of services.
So that’s one thing I’ve done to move them away so that not completely reliant on the sector. And of course, there’s going to be a natural end to the scale of oil production down in Pembrokeshire and around the world. But yeah, we’re all moving in the right direction, I think. And yeah, an interesting sort of want to balance for myself and for our businesses.
Vikram (08:44) So we’re here to discuss the future of solar photovoltaics. I became interested in this podcast because I’ve spent 12 years in solar full time and the future of solar photovoltaics is also my own future. some of the things, the worrying things that I read on the news about the fossil fuel industry, we are in the middle of an energy war and a gas crisis.
We can’t ignore that coal probably still is the number one source of energy worldwide. So there’s a huge population of people, not just in Wales, but around the world that we have to take forward with us. Tata Steel were in the news yesterday, closing the blast furnaces down, 3,000 job losses, and moving potentially to electric furnaces. How do you take these colleagues, your people in your community forward with you? How do you convince them that electric vehicles
and solar and wind is the future when their livelihoods are so heavily impacted.
John Davies 2DK (09:45) Yeah, it’s a challenge and there’s no silver bullet, think. ⁓ You know, getting back to people’s individual homes, there’s definitely a piece there where, you know, in terms of return on investment, putting solar on your roof at home and battery storage and electric vehicles for relatively short trips and things like that, it just makes commercial sense these days. So I think we are educating through
you know, sensible personal finance decisions relating to renewables and ⁓ sort of smart energy systems within your home and things like that. So that’s the first piece. I think there will be ⁓ job losses or certainly job transitions with more of the traditional fossil fuel companies. I’ve been part of some of that, working for coal-fired power stations and
A lot of people have had to transition away from that. don’t think there’s anything to sort of fear there. I think the renewable sector is, from my perspective, is absolutely booming ⁓ and is a great opportunity for people within the oil and gas sector to look at for long-term, secure, well-paid employment. ⁓
quite a lot ⁓ of joint transitional skills and knowledge and competency which can be used in the solar sector. So I think it’s partly education as well and know there’s the sort of lobbying and subsidies and support and all of that piece which I don’t particularly want to get into ⁓ but I think we just need to keep banging the drum. We need to keep improving innovation and technology and efficiencies. ⁓
⁓ Solar is by far the cheapest large-scale energy source in terms of levelized cost of energy out there at the moment. I think that financial driver is really fueling the transition away from fossil fuels and towards large-scale renewable adoption.
Vikram (12:02) John, change is frightening for everyone. I’ve read in the past, when London was run on horses, there was an enormous industry of people shoveling horse manure. There’s a period called the Great Stink of London, if I recall well. And then we had the Industrial Revolution in the UK and invention of the motor car and ⁓ those people that worked in…
horses lost their jobs. And now in a situation there is a great labor shortage and we try to explore some of this change. And one of the surprising discoveries for me is how many people are from the fossil fuel industry in solar? How many people are from the farming industry in solar? Because one of the biggest arguments, the emotions is you’re competing with agriculture. I learned from Clive Cosby on an earlier podcast.
No, we’re not competing agriculture. There’s farmers whose livelihoods are suffering because they can’t make it economical anymore. So when they’re farming energy, it’s actually helping them in the existing trade. Matthew the same, he was diverting water resources in Zimbabwe. then also Guy Atherton, he was a farmer from Queensland. He immigrated from Australia because of farming not making sense financially. So he got into solar like that. Jothi worked on coal fired.
power stations in the past. The only exception probably being Arnold who was very much into solar from almost the very beginning. And then now with yourself, you have a fossil fuels background, you have fossil fuels engagement now, but also you started your career at a coal-fired power station. Do want to tell us a bit about how you went to uni and how you ended up working for Babcock? Is it an usk mouth power station? Please correct me if I’m saying it wrong.
John Davies 2DK (13:59) Uskmouth, yeah, it’s Uskmouth. It was the UK’s oldest operating coal-fired power station. So 330 megawatt, three units. And it was commissioned in the late 50s. So it was, I would say, held together with duct tape and blue tack, but that’s probably exaggerating a little bit. But yeah, I graduated from Swansea Uni.
with a mechanical engineering degree. I then went to work for a mechanical test house, actually, pulling big anchors and chains and things like that apart, which was quite cool as a graduate job. I then proceeded on to a graduate training scheme at Doosan Babcock, formerly ⁓ Mitsui Babcock. ⁓ And they were involved in providing ⁓ boiler and mechanical shutdown.
services on several major RWE power stations. So Ditcot was a big outage that I was part of crawling around the feed system and the boiler system there. So that’s how I got into large scale power station engineering, I suppose. I then picked up a boiler engineering role, but not your sort of domestic boilers, obviously. This is a 150 foot high
pressurized boiler vessel as part of a power station. And then I transitioned to engineering manager and outage manager, managed several very large shutdowns where the whole plant is powered down and we carry out significant maintenance on rotating parts, the steam turbine, all of the pressure parts. And so I heavily involved in that from an engineering perspective.
from an insurance and compliance pressure parts perspective. And I then became station manager. And at the time, I was quite the young age of 28. I was the youngest station manager in the UK. And then had the opportunity to, and that was with SSE at the time, who owned the power station itself, which is just south of Newport in South Wales. I had the opportunity to
transition over to the major projects department of SSE and manage the biomass conversion, which I took. So I really enjoyed that final year at Uskmouth. And during my time there, next door, Seven Power was being built, which is a much larger CCGT gas station. And the project director there, ⁓ Mr. Ian Cromack, he ⁓ saw me, I suppose.
at the time wondering about my future and ⁓ he offered me an opportunity to go and work for a company called Cobalt Energy. So that was the next chapter of my career really as I transitioned out of working for a power station directly into working for an engineering business involved in the development and construction ⁓ of various different power plants.
Vikram (17:22) Interesting you say the conversion from coal to biomass because there are people in solar now and some very, very huge NC projects from a biomass background from Wales, which I will go into on this podcast, but something for us to talk to have a lunch in the future. But with respect to your own personal ambitions and your vision, at what point did you think you don’t want to be in coal-fired power stations or heavy industry like tartar steel?
When did you think you want to go to solo? Was it just looking for a job or did you actually have a plan to get into renewables?
John Davies 2DK (17:58) So at the time when I started with Cobalt Energy, know, solar really wasn’t on the agenda. I’d heard of renewables, of course. And, ⁓ you know, I had a natural engineering sort of geeky interest, I suppose, from a technical perspective in the technology. ⁓ Within Cobalt, my first role was O Mobilization Manager at an energy from waste construction project in Exeter.
which was a real ⁓ eye-opener really, but I was exposed to construction practices and quality management and onboarding operational teams and making sure that all the documentation was in place and in the correct place. So I enjoyed that period. And then I can remember the day really where my boss offered me the opportunity to
to set up a solar and battery storage division within the business. Is this something that I’d be interested in? We had a common client who was working in the energy from waste business and they had a subsidiary solar EPC business. They were looking to get into the UK during the early stages of the boom, the subsidy boom, and that was back in 2012, 13. So my initial remit was,
to find projects for them, to find developers who are looking for bankable EPCs and introduce them. So I very quickly, I suppose, learned who was who in the industry. I attended all of the seminars and conferences and exhibitions and started to pick up a bit of a rapport. We found somewhere between 150 and 200 megawatts over
Over a few years for this, the European EPC, we started to solve their problems, their local problems. And that’s really the origins of 2 degrees Kelvin, I suppose, is we’ve got a history of partnering with European EPCs and IPPs who want to come to the UK and build quality assets. ⁓ And they’ve got local problems to solve and they prefer to
to use someone that they trust and someone who’s going to be open ⁓ and valuable to them. And that’s really how we progressed. In that particular case at Cobalt, we had that partnership established and they decided to partner with us on the O ⁓ And so we got up to around 175 megawatts under management on the O side.
⁓ Being the EPC, it was a fairly limited tenure in each of those cases. It was a two-year warranty period O contract. And so we could see the writing was on the wall. It was a tough business to be in actually, the O at that particular time. still is. It still is. But it was being squeezed. And in terms of the rates and the price points and things like that, ⁓ things were hard.
We were trying to do things in innovative way and provide service excellence, but that wasn’t enough. We just could not find, I suppose, a site owner, a fund who’d be willing to give us a go at that particular stage. ⁓ That was the end of, I suppose, the O peeled off at that stage. That’s when I started thinking, right, I think I’ve always thought about doing something
on my own and at that particular stage I thought possibly it’s just me and a one man band consultancy. I didn’t give it any more thought than that other than I think this is the right time to move.
Vikram (22:04) Fantastic John. I want to dig a bit about your six or seven years at Cobalt. know what two degrees at Kelvin are about. got ten employees now. So there’s a lot of work talk we need to get into but we should remember and reflect that you know energy is an intense business. There’s huge sums of money involved. It’s construction. It’s in some of the most difficult environments in the winter time through political change with
In minimum input price, mentioned earlier IPPs, is independent power producers, EPCs, engineering, procurement consultancies for those that are unaware. But you know what I read a lot and I giggle sometimes, grids of say on their electric forecords and their marketing that our fuel spill is a sunny day. I remember you getting very emotional about the Sea Empress incident in Wales. Do you want to tell us a bit about that before we actually go into
Upwork agenda?
John Davies 2DK (23:00) Yeah, sure. ⁓ For those who are listening and aren’t aware, there was a major environmental disaster down in Pembrokeshire, which is a national park. ⁓ Back in the mid-90s, the ⁓ CM press, which is a ⁓ huge supertanker, ran aground just off St. Anne’s Head there ⁓ and spilt tens of thousands of
gallons of oil, crude oil into the sea and the Pembrokeshire coastline. So yeah, that was in my sort of mid-teens. So, know, me and all my friends, we lived through that and we can remember just sort of sat there on the coastal path, looking out at this shipwreck and seeing the devastation all around us. Yeah, so quite a tough time, I suppose. And that’s a really strong memory for me to…
to draw on and give me motivation why we do need to transition to renewables, why global warming and climate change is such a personal topic of mine and something that I’ve talked about a lot in various mediums. So yeah, it was a huge event and I think there was quite a lot of policy and procedural changes that happened after that to prevent it happening again.
But yeah, these sorts of global environmental catastrophes, we really need to draw a line under and prevent as much as we can in terms of process safety, health and safety and all those sorts of things.
Vikram (24:40) Of course offshore wind is very dangerous. You can have turbines which are 80 meters up in the air and in offshore environments. But in comparison to oil and gas, Wales is a special place for me because in my early days I learnt my trade visiting Celso Steel, Chevron and other such companies. was even then a company called Dudlis that was doing solar since the 80s. So it was always an amazing place to visit.
you you would have phone signal, which wasn’t a bad thing because you get left alone from the office sometimes. But are you able to comment more about your communities in the places you work and the places you’ve lived? What are some of the health and safety challenges of working in these heavy steel plants and coal power stations and oil refineries? What is the environment like for the workers being there?
John Davies 2DK (25:32) Oil refineries, I started working for my father’s company at quite a young age, really, 15, 16. Very quickly, you find yourself on coma site, having to do all of the inductions and surrounded by highly flammable, explosive materials, liquids, processes, pressurized systems, all of this sort of thing. You learn very quickly.
to stay in your line and only do what you’re allowed to do. ⁓ In Uskmouth, it was a coal-fired power station. Certainly on the coal side and boiler side, was mills. was quite a ⁓ thick, dusty, dark, gloomy environment in certain cases. The turbine hall was completely different. It was quite light and airy, but full of
of almost that mechanical smell of steam. you know, maybe that’s, I’ve got fond memories of that and seeing our operations manager, you know, bring up on to load these, these steam turbines and synchronizing to grid and, and all of that sort of thing. I’ve spent a bit of time, had a six months, we’d do some Babcock in the steelworks down in Port Talbot. And, you know, they’re quite challenging industrial environments that the
The O staff need to keep on top of. ⁓ But yeah, they’re always investing in keeping these places as clean as possible. And obviously health and safety has transitioned significantly over the last 20 years. yeah, that’s my sort of two pennies worth on that.
Vikram (27:20) And now if we compare that to your campaign at Cobalt Energy, I remember them being very active in the past at events such as Solar Finance and so on. Of course, some people have the misconception that solar runs itself, which is not the case. It’s a huge undertaking in terms of construction. At the same time, the culture is not as intense as oil and gas and coal and steel plants.
What was your reflection, you know, without getting into the day to day details and the politics or anything confidential, what was your reflection of seven, six or seven years of O business at Cobalt Energy? What memories do you take away from that period? Good or bad?
John Davies 2DK (28:00) Yeah, I think there was a general excitement to grow as an organization in the first case, know, O ⁓ You know, when I stood on an empty field in 2012 with our partners to be, ⁓ whilst they carried out a survey. And then, you know, 12 months later, I’m standing in the same field, but surrounded by rows of solar panels. I’ve got an O ⁓
scope of work in my hand and I’ve got a young O technician who’s electrically qualified. And that was it really. We had to create all of the templates, the reporting templates. We had to ensure that we were hitting all of the frequencies, the various inspections and testing and find our way. But I think…
generally, know, solar farm environments are out in the open. It’s a completely different environment. And I think that’s been part of the challenges. You know, ⁓ our first exposure to solar farm construction, having been from UK heavy industry, which is fairly world renowned for health and safety and standards and things like that. It was a bit of a shock to the system, how fast it was and how
you know how I would say I would say sort of, you know, quick and quick and dirty it was, but it it wasn’t refined and it was get it in as soon as possible. ⁓ And, you know, I think from the early days in the boom, there’s been some significant improvements in the engineering side and the safety side and certainly the quality side. But there’s a long way to go in my opinion. And that’s part of the two.
2DK piece really, 2 degrees Kelvin is the quality piece. It’s to champion quality, to talk about quality along the project life cycle itself from origination of sites all the way through to really sound top industry practices in construction commissioning and even onto decommissioning, repower projects, things like that. Quality is the…
the golden thread that runs through the entire project life cycle.
Vikram (30:27) John, so you founded in 2019 at 2 degrees Kelvin a business almost four years old now with ten employees You are one of the leading authorities now on Electro-Luminescence testing Do you want to tell us a bit about 2 degrees Kelvin or 2DK for short? Why did you choose this name? What does it mean?
John Davies 2DK (30:46) Well, I was looking for to make a difference in the world. So two degrees Kelvin is really a, it’s a nod ⁓ to the unfortunate situation with regards to global warming ⁓ and the Paris Agreement and the commitment to stay underneath 1.5 degrees ⁓ in general atmospheric warming. But for me, the data and the trend is unfortunately
is going to punch through that. So for me, it’s all about two degrees. And being an engineer, ⁓ rather than Celsius, course, Kelvin is the preferred thermodynamics ⁓ unit of choice. And it’s the same scale unit, ⁓ although offset. So that’s where two degrees Kelvin came from. And 2DK is for short. Obviously, people prefer 2DK because it’s easier to say.
⁓ So yeah, so that’s where it’s come from
Vikram (31:48) There’s so much for us to talk about and of course we’ll have to do other podcasts in the future with our partners and clients in the industry and even colleagues. How did you find the time to become a published author? Do want to tell us about that before we go further into your business?
John Davies 2DK (32:04) Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was never a plan. You know, I scraped two C’s in English language and literature in school in GCSEs. So, you know, not particularly strong point of mine, certainly from school days. So writing a book was something that I hadn’t even thought of. I went on an entrepreneurial accelerator the year before COVID hit and one of the
One of the things that resonated really was the requirement to publish and share insights. And one of the points really related to look the most effective business card you could ever have is a published or number one Amazon bestselling book. And so I set out my stall really in terms of my plan to produce what wasn’t around, which was a
you know, a layman’s term guide to the utility scale solar industry. And that’s where solar boom came from. And obviously I hadn’t written a book before, so I followed guidelines and I dug in. Took me about 18 months from the initial planning all the way through to publishing. And there was various stages that I had no idea about. I found out that I write lots of words in the middle of sentences that there’s no need for.
⁓ And, you know, the edited script that came back was more red than black. But yeah, I pushed on through the COVID period ⁓ and, you know, hopefully created something that is a resource for the industry. I’ve sold just under 5,000 copies worldwide now, which I’m really proud of. And I’m probably giving away two or 3,000 of ⁓ eBooks and hard copies to, you know, to partners and clients.
and friends. it, you know, it’s, it’s, it, I suppose it’s put me on, on the map as well, you know, from a, a key person of influence within the industry. Like I’m not, I’m not saying I’m a, a, absolute expert in every single discipline. ⁓ but I’ve been able to pick up and retain a lot of useful information. And I noticed that
A lot of people I was speaking to actually knew a lot about their particular niche within the industry, whether they’re a supplier or service provider, but they didn’t really know who else was around them. They didn’t know how projects were developed and constructed and financed and all those sorts of things. So that was really my aim is to create something that could be used as almost a resource to look back on and to
to give newcomers to the industry something that they could very quickly build that foundation knowledge of the industry itself. So yeah, it’s something I’m very proud of and managed to get Amazon number one bestselling status in four categories and beat Bill Gates in one of those. So I was quite chuffed, although momentarily only for several days until his book sales took over mine again.
Yeah, his book was how to avoid a climate disaster. yeah, so I’ve still got copies in my hard copies in my garage, as you can imagine, but certainly distributing them where I can and, you know, wanted to offer all those listeners of this podcast a free ebook. So please do reach out to Vikram or myself and I’d be happy to send one over to
Vikram (35:49) Fantastic. And so this is an entry-level ebook for new people in the industry, for people who are investors and they just want to get a rough idea of what this is all about. I did purchase your book, John, and I’ve shown this to my kids and I had to read it My daughter who’s 15, she very much enjoyed it as well and thanks you for writing the book. But you are…
not just a beginner you are a chartered mechanical engineer what steps do you take to to keep your chartership
John Davies 2DK (36:22) ⁓ Well, the chartership status, I suppose, is different depending on which discipline. It’s similar in certain ways, but ⁓ the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, for example, you had to go through a chartership application. ⁓ I did this probably 10, 15 years ago or so where you have to ⁓ prepare almost a dossier of your engineering ⁓ exposure.
and what you’ve been involved with and improve the sort of breadth and depth of your engineering knowledge, particularly in my case with a mechanical engineering degree in mechanical engineering. So I was charted before I got into the solar industry. I think that obviously there’s other institutions out there and slightly different ⁓ processes and routes through.
But I was lucky enough to go down the CNG route, the chartered engineer. think there’s incorporated engineer as well. But I’d certainly recommend doing that. I think it holds a bit more clout in places like Germany, where it’s actually a title and your name, much like a doctor. Whereas, yeah, in the UK, it’s lost a little bit. And yet there seems to be lots of engineers out there of all different disciplines. ⁓
I’m not dissing those people and in fact, you know, those engineers and certainly technicians are much more practical and know much more about all of the intricate and technical elements practically, a lot more than I do. But anyone who’s, ⁓ you know, got a degree or a master’s or a PhD and they’re moving forward in the engineering discipline, I’d certainly encourage the progression towards chartership status.
Vikram (38:17) What I want say on that is, you know, you are a professional engineer, even I’ve dealt with some top level electrical engineers and it’s impossible to know everything. Some people have the degrees, they’re doctorates and doctors of engineering and science and they’ve spent 20 years in sales and some people have spent 20 years in sales and are deeply involved and we’re not far away from the Royal Institution which is famous for Michael Faraday. He didn’t take a typical route.
At the same time, not everyone is a Michael Faraday. There is a need for process and professionality, which sometimes can be lacking, especially when we’ve gone through a great retirement and Brexit has meant a lot of senior people have left the country. There is very much a need for professional structure. so you have involvement with Solar Trade bodies, you’re vice chair of the Solar Energy UK’s
large-scale technical working group. What is your involvement there and what is it all about?
John Davies 2DK (39:18) Well, Solar Energy UK is also a trade association. I suppose it’s the body that represents solar, in domestic, commercial, industrial scale, and also utility scale. It’s a voluntary membership association, so companies can join their membership. Then they have various working groups.
⁓ specific to different sub industries, if you like, and then specific areas within those sub industries. So the large scale technical working group’s been going for several years and chairs and vice chairs come and go. I got invited by a friend of mine, Will Hitchcock, who’s the CEO at Above Surveying. He’s the chair there and asked me to come along and help out and contribute.
So I’ve only been doing it for several months and been part of two or three working groups, but we like to bring insightful and interesting content to those working groups. So it’s a great opportunity not only to listen to innovation and cut and edge things, but also it’s a great networking opportunity as well because a lot of the…
big players, funds, asset managers, EPCs, O &M’s, TAs, they all seem to attend. So I certainly recommend anyone listening to this who wants to increase their network and ⁓ learn more about the technicalities of this amazing industry to become a member of Solar Energy UK. It’s a great institute and they do a lot of good work, particularly
around policy and ⁓ elevating solar ⁓ as an industry.
Vikram (41:18) Fantastic. There is a need for technical working groups. After purchasing your book and having a look, did buy Bill Gates book on climate disaster and he talks about what I tend to do now is I buy the audio book and the physical book. I just like to listen and you know, sometimes with all the screen time, you don’t have the luxury of reading books all the time at work either, but the audio books work fantastic. And Bill Gates in his book says, know, this
eye-watering sums that will need to be spent on energy storage, battery storage specifically, it’s going to be game changing. The biggest machine in the world is the power grid itself and it’s going to be completely transforming. You raise an important point there about above surveying, guess, that they do drone surveys of solar farms. In your case, you’re a bit more detailed than that. You do electro-luminescence testing.
You’re the only expert I know in this area. Tell us the difference between drone surveys and EL Electro-Luminescence testing.
John Davies 2DK (42:21) Sure. So yeah, we have a long standing partnership with ABOVE. From our O days, we started to use them as a partner for aerial thermography, which is of infrared surveys of operational solar farms. Still, by far, the biggest bang for your buck in terms of having a ⁓ site-wide overview of general condition and health, it’s particularly useful for
for the commissioning period and making sure all your modules are in good order, your strings are all connected, all inverters are operating sensibly. And it’s become a very good value service, ⁓ relatively cheap to take part and to actually deploy on very large solar farms very quickly.
And of course the back end of those sorts of systems is now being developed. So you have digital twins ⁓ where you have, you know, in God mode, if you like, Google maps mode, looking down on your asset with all individual modules and various different electrical components ⁓ all on there digitally. So you can put on there not only the thermography image, but multiple other images, tests, reports, whatever it may be.
So that’s a little bit about above and ⁓ we’ve still got an ongoing collaboration there moving towards ⁓ construction monitoring services. But the part that we’ve become best known for, I suppose, is more advanced ⁓ analytical testing, in particular, electro luminescence and flash testing. Electro luminescence is almost a forensic level
inspection technique which allows the solar panel to act like an LED, a light emitting diode essentially. You back power the solar panel itself and in ⁓ zero light conditions, so either in an artificial dark room or container or test van or even at night if it’s in situ, it emits almost like an X-ray type ⁓
quite bright light gray image that illuminates and enables you to see not only the range of possible mechanical damage, but a long list of potential manufacturing defects. So from an IR and thermography perspective, you could diagnose that ⁓ a module has a hotspot or a thermal anomaly, whereas from a electro luminescence test,
You could be very specific, whether it’s manufacturing defects like grid finger interruptions or styration rings or delamination, or it could be widespread mechanical damage. And we have a range of test machines and rigs that are used at different points along the value chain. So quite often we provide post shipment testing as part of the quality management.
strategy for EPCs and IPPs, project owners essentially, where we will take a representative sample of those brand new fresh out of the packet modules. We will carry out electro luminescence and flash testing and that the flash testing is a calibrated IV curve essentially which exposes the module to standard test conditions, which is thousand watts per meter squared at 25 degrees. So we can give you a point in time
power output and look at the power class of the module where it should be allowing for inaccuracies. And then we can also provide the consistent high quality electro luminescence images so that we can check, you know, a relatively inexpensive check to make sure that the quality of the modules are suitable before they go into your site. And the next part of that is the installation.
methodology and quality management. making sure that the installation parties are handling the pallets around the site correctly. They’re unpacking them and supporting them as they’re being unpacked. And they’ve got a sound, safe and technically suitable installation methodology. So they’re not being thrown in ⁓ and mechanical damage is being caused. So we have a…
array of different rigs that we can carry out in situ electro luminescence testing. And this is, I suppose, to verify that installation standards have been followed and mechanical damage hasn’t been ⁓ introduced at that particular stage. Now, there has been a transition in the attitude. mean, still in the most part, if it says that you need to do these two types of tests in
the employer’s requirements document, then the EPC needs to do it. But there has been a transition where EPCs are actually embracing this sort of testing to almost promote the care and the quality and the standards of their installations. So it’s very much looked upon now as not a pain or an inconvenience, but also
a verification tool or demonstration of quality and making sure that we’re not installing brand new multi hundred thousand unit modules in solar farms that are riddled with mechanical damage and manufacturing issues.
Vikram (48:20) I think for people that are not in the industry or even near entrance People don’t appreciate the scale of large utility scale Solar farms, know you you are an expert but if I forgive me if I if I butcher any terms or say anything technically wrong and do it correct me but I remember you as as the the as the chap who has a mobile test laboratory
that’s essentially able to produce photocopies of solar panels in 2D images using this ElectroLuminescence testing technology, which shows something that we do care about, the eye can’t see, which is microcracks. And before you talk about microcracks and why that’s important electrically and in terms of the warranty, the scale is important. A 300 megawatt solar farm can easily have 1,040 foot containers.
of modules, which is that’s an entire container ship. And they do do EL and other testing when the modules are boarding in China or wherever they’re coming from. Why is it important to do this kind of X-ray of your solar cells, at least for a representative sample when they are being unloaded on site?
John Davies 2DK (49:38) Yeah, absolutely. So I suppose just to start with, just for everyone’s understanding, we would call it upstream testing or upstream quality management services, which would be professional engineering businesses based in Asia or around where the bulk of the manufacturing facilities are. And they provide factory audits. They provide ⁓ procurement guidance for clients and also a real forensic look at
at the bill of materials and ⁓ where the various materials come from. Because of course, many of these ⁓ manufacturing facilities, they’re not the manufacturer per se of the wafers, but they get them in from a wafer production plant. So it’s really important that there’s this upstream piece ⁓ to minimize the risk, particularly when you’re purchasing either multiple
You know, 50, 100 megawatt sites or large end-sit projects, you know, because a lot of these defects that we’re finding are batch related. And so you can have almost the identical nameplate on a solar panel, but in two different parts or two different containers. And the origins of the materials have come from different places with slightly different quality standards. So Upstream has its place and that’s growing around the world as a
as a risk reduction exercise, for lenders and funders, that’s very important. However, what I would sort of raise people’s awareness of is that that’s fine, but we’re still seeing damage in tier one modules that are coming through in shipping containers. I think the bifacial technology, the shift towards bifaciality and glass, glass,
large format modules, we have seen actually from a testing perspective, a reduction in mechanical damage. And that’s due to the stiffness, we believe, of the modules themselves. However, ⁓ we have seen an uptick in manufacturing related defects and their volume and intensity in certain cases. So we’re still seeing a lot. Every site that we test on, we find things.
I know people don’t like to pay for bad news, but we’re there to lower risks and ⁓ highlight in certain cases that the modules are not up to standard and you shouldn’t be paying for things that are below par. And all of these individual potential power ⁓ generation impacting conditions will worsen over time.
And these will compound over time over hundreds of thousands of modules. So when you’re talking about 50 megawatt schemes plus, know, pretty minor defects, but you’re finding in 30 or 40 % of your representative sample will have a multimillion pound impact on that scheme over the 30 to 40 year life. So really critical stuff really. And it’s not only the shipping,
risk that we’re looking for. Like I said, it’s the mechanical damage and then it’s the line in the sand in terms of making sure that construction standards are elevated. And we’re putting these large format modules, which are very big. They’re almost four man lifts ⁓ now to do it safely. We’re looking at mechanical aids to fit modules onto the top of three meter high mounting structures. So we really need to focus in because we could be
you know, in our rush to get it in the ground and get it on the bars, we’re going back to our subsidy March 31st days where we’re under pressure to energize. And we just need to take a breath and realize that, you know, relatively small things that we can introduce now and improvements will compound over time for the next 40 years. So.
Vikram (54:01) To go towards a positive direction, I wouldn’t say it’s bad news at all because what we do know from the past 10 years plus is that eventually there is a fight between O and whoever did the EBC. Eventually there are questions about warranty and if there’s a solid quality control process to begin with, everybody wins. No one wins when there’s litigation and people are getting NDA signed and all.
unfortunately really bringing people leave the industry or retire from the stress because it’s a huge undertaking. We want to do what 70 plus gigawatts by 2035, which means from last year, maybe a thousand or 1600 megawatts, we need to ramp up to over five gigawatts a year. It’s not including what we have to do additionally with battery storage. I think there’s over 30 gigawatt hours of battery storage in planning. There’s over 22 gigawatt peak of solar in planning.
There’s no consideration or formula to determine what EVs will demand in terms of the grid. The pure energy from EVs is almost nothing. But if you want one terawatt in a few seconds, you need cables that are the size of trucks. You know, so there’s a lot of challenges ahead and we want to start on a positive footing to begin with. So your EL testing document, which for me is still mind boggling and something I need to get my head around, is it enforceable in terms of warranties with the major module producers?
If there is damage, there is manufacturing defects, is that something the asset owner can do? Because they can’t slow down construction. There’s 300 people on site often. Every day they’re standing there, they’re losing money. They need to build. But later there is, I suppose, questions. Can they use your EL reports to do warranty claims with the manufacturer?
John Davies 2DK (55:50) Yes,
we’ve been involved in several successful warranty claims. mean, that’s the highlighting of the issues is what we’re trying to do from a risk reduction perspective. You know, we’re not sort of bashing module manufacturers here at all. In certain cases, we’re working very closely with manufacturers to ensure and highlight the quality of their products. I think it all stems from
an education piece predominantly actually to the TAs, so the technical advisors who are responsible for drafting and distributing employers’ requirements specifications because inevitably if it doesn’t say you need to do these types of testing in the spec, then it doesn’t get done. So we’re exposed to several large IPPs, independent power producers,
and EPCs, engineer, procure and construct contractors ⁓ who are on the front foot in terms of quality and they insist on these types of tests, which is great. But we’re also seeing a lot of solar farms being built without any ⁓ module testing at all. So I think that’s something that needs to change. I would certainly encourage TAs to come and speak to us and we can share some insights about.
the return on investment because it’s an absolute no brainer, particularly if you’re finding defects. And it really does add to the value. If long-term holding is the priority for the project owner, then you will have more production. And if you are looking to sell your asset in a few years time, then the…
the robust documentation and evidence of the quality of your site is going to add to the value of the sale price of the asset. So it ticks a lot of boxes. Yeah, and I think that 2DK, we’re doing our best to talk about quality, to ensure that, you know, along the pipeline that designs standards are elevated, you know, especially with these large NSIP schemes.
that we’re sensitive to the fact that these are huge. mean, some of these hundred megawatt plus schemes are like small towns and you’re going to have, if not, you know, industrial relations issues, but certainly community relations is going to come into this now for these ⁓ large format sites. They need to be designed with longevity and operability in mind, not
⁓ quick gains or quick savings on capex. So that’s really, really important. Like I said before, upstream and downstream quality checks, that’s really, really critical as well. There needs to be a professionalization of the construction management and a real adoption of quality management as a dedicated ⁓ commitment from these EPCs and IPPs to
to really demonstrate quality and ensure that it’s going to last because we’ve been lucky enough to visit over 200 operational sites in the UK as 2 degrees Kelvin. And the bulk of those sites, we are seeing preventable construction quality related issues that if it would have been done, you know, perhaps under not so much time pressure at the time, then we wouldn’t have the high volume.
condition that we’ve got now. So there’s this definite lessons learned that we can put in to robust quality management elements and a whole range now of quite advanced inspection and testing tools and applications and even leaning towards AI. So we’re really excited about the prospect of moving quality up the priority list within the industry.
Vikram (1:00:03) Fantastic John and as we come towards the end of our session, we need to make some closing remarks. My message to young people, people from fossil fuels is, know, the renewables, solar specifically, batteries, EVs, the opportunity is big and it’s only going to get bigger. Specifically, this means we have 15 gigawatts of solar in the UK now, we’d get to 70 gigawatts within the next decade or less, really, and that’s still not enough to hit our goals. Worldwide we’ve…
install over a terawatt of solar, terawatt peak of solar, and there’s the future scenarios are 75 terawatt by 2050. So it’s just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. there’s plenty of opportunity to go out there. in terms of reaching serious numbers, we do need to get more professional, more serious and bring more people on board together with us. Otherwise, we won’t hit our goals if everything becomes about arguments and negativity. From your perspective.
Do you want to just close with telling us about your Academy of Solar Excellence and also a message to your listeners out there?
John Davies 2DK (1:01:09) Certainly, yes. ⁓ We’ve obviously been exposed to not only the live pipeline of construction projects that’s going on at the moment, but we can see the future pipeline. Like you said, it’s quite exciting and ⁓ quite daunting actually, the scale of gigawatts that are through the planning pipeline. Then you couple that with, I suppose, an unfortunate sort
step change in available labor, which relates to Brexit, and changes in immigration law, which means that the previous solar boom, the majority of that was built by European labor. ⁓ I think now with the uptick in deployment, we’re looking to Europe for labor support, ⁓ but unfortunately, it’s not an easy or smooth ⁓ access.
route through. So we’ve seen, I suppose, this growing demand for UK-based labour and also to improve the standards of European travelling labour as well. with this in mind ⁓ and increasing quality as a general theme within 2° Kelvin, we’ve developed a micro-credential training company called the Academy of Solar Excellence.
We are in build mode at the moment. Our plans are to develop ⁓ an initial range of online training courses which are accessible to the masses and are very affordable. These will start with a stream in construction, looking at a general operative on a solar farm construction project, then discipline specific courses, which would be complementary to that in civils, mechanical and electrical.
and then also ⁓ a management and supervisor course as well. So that’s in the construction stream, that’s our plans and we’re all but finished on the first course and we have quite advanced syllabus in the other ones. And then we have our fundamentals course range as well, which is an introduction to utility scale solar. You have design and development fundamentals.
You have O fundamentals and ⁓ revamp and repower fundamentals as well. So some real interesting stuff that people will be able to take online and take advantage of our exposure to all of the sites that we visited and all of the construction sites that we’re involved with at the moment. We do have plans to advance that, hopefully to multiple locations around
the country, know, a range of more physical and practical training, because of course you can’t create a competent electrical technician from purely an online course. There’s a whole range of things you need to do there. So we’re looking to work with regions and possibly NSIP projects to support the development of ⁓ and employment of local.
local staff and operatives and to train them throughout the deployment of these large scale solar projects. it’s not a silver bullet. It’s only part of the story. I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the government solar task force skills group in 2023, which has just concluded. And we also have a skills and workforce group within Solar Energy UK.
So I’m a part of all that and I can see that it’s because of the complexity and diversity of the sector, particularly, you know, at one end you’ve got domestic where you’ve got, you know, multi-skilled electricians who do EVs and air source heat pumps and put solar and batteries on your domestic residents, all the way to much more discipline specific and high volume workforces in ⁓ utility that it’s not
one size fits all, there’s no silver bullet. So our contribution to this is to provide ⁓ certainly utility scale, solar focused range of training resources and competency management systems so that we are doing our bit to increase or improve the quality of installations and development design all the way through to operations and maintenance revamp and repower as well.
Vikram (1:05:58) Fantastic, John. Lots of work to do. I’ve certainly enjoyed this podcast. We’ll listen back to reflect on some of the points. I’m sure we’ll be back in a year’s time to reflect on the progress that we’ve made. You’re obviously very active in sports and with your family as well. Doing Ironman, as you mentioned before we started the podcast. So I’ve certainly enjoyed your time here, John. Then I’ll be following up with you later on. Thanks so much for joining us.
John Davies 2DK (1:06:27) Thank you, Vikram. An absolute pleasure. ⁓ yeah, just thanks to Victor and really to all of the listeners of bringing this podcast to the sector. And I certainly, you know, distribute links to this podcast far and wide with my network. Thank you, Vikram.
Vikram (00:02) Welcome to the Future of Photovoltaics podcast. We are already on our seventh episode, getting immense interest from our colleagues in the industry. Today, I’m very excited to have Mr. Brett Baber, head of ONM at Belectric UK join us. Brett, welcome.
Brett Baber (00:18) Thanks for having me.
Vikram (00:20) I want to talk a bit about how we first met, I think, because it was a strange time. was a lot of bad things about the lockdown and the COVID pandemic, but not many people talk about the good things. I think meeting you were one of the good things of that period. rebuilt our businesses after Brexit and things started going immensely well for us. then March 2020, we get told by Boris, we’re going into lockdown.
You know, and we start this whole virtual reality world of working and then all the things change with our existing customers. You know, first, I remember walking around Bank in London and feeling like the Will Smith movie, I am legend because there was not a single person there. You know, the good thing was there was no traffic. So I met one of your former colleagues, Mr. Liam Hicks and Mr. Dayton Eldridge.
you know, you could get offices for 10 quid an hour because there was nobody in them. so, and then after the initial meeting with Dez, we agreed to meet at GridServe Braintree Electric Four Court because, you know, we had to do social distance meetings and, you know, things kept changing so often. And I remember you turning up in a nice YMG to charge in Braintree and that’s how we were first meeting.
Brett Baber (01:42) I mean just about made it from my house. I mean had about 140 mile range on that thing but it was decent car apart from the range but yeah, yeah was an interesting time wasn’t it?
Vikram (01:51) it was certainly and it’s already been four years how time flies and you know so I want to talk a bit about you as a person before we get into discussing the future of photovoltaics specific technical details you know because people is what make this industry fun to be in and in terms of how you got to where you are your early career challenges growing up but do want to tell us a bit about that?
Brett Baber (02:17) Yeah, I I mean, probably a pretty normal life to most people, working class family in Norfolk. I had two older brothers and an older sister. I was the youngest of the family by by some margin, my sister being almost 10 years older than me. Both my brothers quite early joined joined the army straight from school at 16. So it’s imprinted on me pretty early in life that I didn’t want to be the, you know, the brother in that family who didn’t join the army. So
quite early I had already decided that I was going to join the army. So I kind of switched off a bit, if I’m honest with you. At school, I was never massively taken in by lessons and academically I did struggle, if I’m honest with you. And I switched off and I just had it in my head I was going to join the army. And then at 16, I’d done that. I managed to just scrape in and get into a junior apprenticeship scheme.
And that’s really where my life started to change a bit. You definitely find in the military that you have to comply, you have to try your hardest. There is no second efforts at things. And if you are that type of person, you didn’t last in the military very long. So I think in the military definitely crafted my management skill to a certain degree because you’re obviously in situations and times doing, you know, working with
with people and you need to know that they’re pretty robust around you as well. So it led to some interesting times. I ⁓ ended up going across to Bosnia ⁓ in a place called Banja Luka where I was based for six months looking after radios and basically the communications equipment. Yeah, six months of real soldiers running about doing work while I was… ⁓
based getting a suntan, drinking coke in the back of a Range Rover. So yeah, it wasn’t all bad in the military for me. I had pretty easy time, but I just found that for me, I always had a bit more drive and the military, felt kind of stifled me, if I’m honest with you. kind of, you know, it’s a certain amount of time served with ranks in the military and stuff. And I found it really hard to sit there for a long time and kind of, felt a bit stale. So after six years, I kind of decided to leave
took my resettlement, done some management, further management training and then yeah, found myself working in the agriculture industry really.
Vikram (04:48) There’s a massive transition from struggling in school to joining the army. At what point did you think I should join the army? I’m not good at school. You obviously are very well spoken, so I wouldn’t know that you struggled at school.
Brett Baber (05:02) I something happened quite early in my life where I remember being, if you’re going to rewind really back, I remember being a real child, probably 10 at school. And we were listening to this show and the teacher said afterwards, we want everyone in the class to write a letter and we’re going to send it to this DJ and hopefully we’ll all get a reply. And at the end of the lesson, the teacher held me aside and went, we have a certain standard in school, so we’re not going to send your letter off.
I remember that really resonating with me that I just wasn’t good enough. I I of carried that through for a long time until I hit the military and actually realized that if I was taught stuff in the right way and I was explained stuff properly, actually I wasn’t stupid. was actually quite intelligent and that really gave me the confidence to believe in myself a bit more.
School’s not for everyone, it certainly didn’t work for me and I strongly believe in academics, I really do, but it it failed me in my early years. So yes, I think thankfully for the military, kind of, it did stick me and stand me on my feet and kind of make me who I am today to a lot, there’s still a lot of things now. 25 years after leaving the army, they’re still with me and they, still do to this day.
Vikram (06:18) Did you ever get enrolled in combat or any confrontational situations? ⁓ Why were you deployed to Bosnia? What was going on and when was that?
Brett Baber (06:27) At the time I was quite young, I was 18, so the conflict there was the Serbian-Croatian conflict. We were sent as a stabilisation force. The idea was we were to act as police, re-infrastructure, rebuild. It was that kind, so it was after the first wave. So for me, I’ve been really lucky in terms of my military career. I’ve been to conflict areas. I’ve never been involved in any direct action.
Like I said, the real soldiers are out there carrying the guns. I was sat there just building up my son’s hand. The King does go to the real soldiers. I wasn’t certainly one of them. just used it as a career stepping stone.
Vikram (07:10) And we obviously to 10 people out of their bubbles during the lockdown easing we ran this social networking drinks thing in London just to see people again and I remember you mentioned before you carried a rifle, right?
Brett Baber (07:24) Yeah, I mean, I had one. mean, God forbid I have to shoot the bloody thing, but yeah, definitely. I was a soldier at the end of the day. I was weapons trained and stuff. I believe when I used to drive around in tanks and stuff, it all feels quite surreal now to think about it. But it all felt like a really long holiday, if I’m honest with you.
Vikram (07:42) It’s a big thing because you were trusted to carry a rifle, gun and you didn’t do anything silly.
Brett Baber (07:49) You know, never squeeze a trigger once in anything but a range.
Vikram (07:52) Yeah, exactly. So you can be trusted with sensitive equipment. And then you mentioned that you became an engineer or got a technical NVQ level three. Do want to tell us about that?
Brett Baber (08:10) I don’t even know to this day how I managed to blag it, if I’m honest with you. ⁓ It was part of the phase in the army where it was coming out of the 80s and 90s where they really didn’t leave soldiers with anything. You just done your time in the army and left. They really done this whole reboot phase with MVQs. What I don’t remember doing a lot of the actual course, I remember the assessors turning up, doing a lot of interviewing. We’d do some tests back and forth. Like I I ended up leaving with an MVQ level three.
without even touching anything outside of a radio with 12 amps on it kind of thing. it’s dangerous when you think of it, I suppose. So I left with the theory and not the practical really. But no, it was good. But then like I said, that experience has still helped me even in agricultural crew and stuff like that. So it was all building blocks to where I’ve got to now.
Vikram (09:06) What do what do you mean by agriculture career? Did you work as a farmer?
Brett Baber (09:10) I wasn’t a farmer. My father had worked in milling, agricultural milling pretty much his whole life. So when I left the army and I’d done a bit of management training, I ended up working with my father, which again, an amazing experience to see a man who was this disciplinary figure as a child suddenly be a normal person who goes to work. So yeah, I went to work with him and looked after a small team of
milling guys and engineers and the maintenance team responsible for scheduling. It was my first real kind of job outside the army where I had a small team and it was electrically based to a certain degree where I had to have some understanding, but I didn’t really have to be the expert. But it was more about the same as within the solar energy really. It was about managing expectations of your contract to make sure you deliver all the feed and all the milling requirements we had. So yeah, it’s not quite the rock and roll.
lifestyle we live in solar, but again, it was something that is essential in my life in learning management, especially coming out of the military where you ask someone to do something in military, they just do it. So one of the hardest things I certainly had to learn in my first kind of roles is that if you ask someone to do something, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to do it.
To me, was mind-boggling because from school, I’ve always had that mindset that you’ve asked to get on with a certain degree. Obviously, there’s an assessment of health and safety and there’s nothing against that. But yeah, it was my first real experience. You actually have to manage people and it’s not just a dictatorship. That hurt me. I don’t mind being my first management role. I was pretty heavy for first six months until I realized that you don’t really get anything out of anyone that way. It was quite integral.
making sure that I understand that work is a necessity for most people and nearly all of us. And actually, you get the best out of people by making sure their life balance and work is all in harmony really. And that’s quite hard with shift workers and stuff like that in agriculture. There’s always issues for everyone. So running a 24-hour shift seven days a week is tough for a lot of people like that. So it was a challenge.
and I’ve done that for a lot of years really.
Vikram (11:31) Speaking of work, how did your military service shape your approach to your profession and career? Specifically, we work in an electrical industry, in the power industry, I’m most interested in is your NVQ level 3. Did that allow you to become an electrical engineer or technician? Are you able to give us some context on that at all?
Brett Baber (11:49) I mean, not in my early stages. I mean, when I say when I first left, I went pretty much into management and there was electrical works to do, but it was the same as something I didn’t need to be an electrician, although I had the MVQ level three. My first real taster was really when I joined renewables. And that’s the first time that qualification really helped me. I went in ⁓ to LightSource as a junior engineer. I remember
Going in quite early 2013, I went to London and met up with the management team there, explained that, know, been in the army, practically had all this theory training, but never really put it to pieces. And they had the confidence really in me to give me a job really, and allow me to learn those practical skills on site. And yeah.
build up. So that was my first experience into using my qualification from the army really. Before that, it had all been just management really. I just naturally fought from the military. That’s where I was going. So never thought I would take a change in a career, certainly at that age of my life really. I thought I was just going to stay in the agricultural industry forever. Yeah. And then suddenly this opportunity and I really felt the time in my life where I wanted to change. I had young children and all that as well.
you start looking at the financials of staying in agriculture or moving across into a new industry. So yeah, I took that leap and that definitely was the main reason I managed to get into light source. And I know they stayed at a stage when, again, it was part of the first boom, so it was just growing so quickly. I mean, don’t even know how many megawatts they had when I
Vikram (13:35) Light Source are very important because many of our early EBC clients such as Soul Sentry and Oscar Mera were working for Light Source in the peak feed-in tariff time. So what year did you join Light Source? ⁓ So I joined in 2013.
Brett Baber (13:51) 2013, believe it was.
Yeah, honestly, it was early on. It was either spring or summer kind of thing. But yeah, so I joined them at the stage where they were still trying to get engineers through the doors. there was some really good people. one, you know, not just with, it’s like sort of pivotal company because they’ve essentially created this huge O &M industry to which, know, it’s still to this day a massive industry and quite rightfully owned by it.
of the big fuel companies now because of how big it’s grown. In terms of its importance, the people they managed to get there were quite incredible. They had some really good engineers who had been in early days of solar and they managed to get them across to train everyone up. It was a really good experience for me, LightSource.
Vikram (14:44) I pinch myself, know, and we say, you we delivered a lot indirectly to LightSource, transferred a lot of warranties, which I remember getting the signatures for. And then, you know, I pinch myself and think, you know, they are owned by BP, British Petroleum, you know, something that we’ve done is that belong to the oil and gas industry, you know. When I first entered renewables, you know, I wasn’t necessarily motivated by climate change, but I preferred to do renewables over working in.
you know, defense, for example, because it gave me that warm fuzzy feeling that what we’re doing is greening the earth, is giving land, breathing space, you know, and we are doing something that’s clean. So felt less guilty about driving a fossil fuel car because I’m offsetting some of my carbon with all this good solar work that we’re doing. But now that they belong to BP, you know, it is a bit surreal, but also getting very serious.
What motivated you to move into renewables? What was your drive? it, did you just want any job or did you have a specific focus?
Brett Baber (15:41) I definitely wanted to do something which meant a bit more. Again, it was no offense against the Herian Culture Institute, but I’d done it for six, seven years, eight years. I can’t even remember how long I’d done it for, a lot of years. I really just wanted to change. At that stage, again, I don’t think I thought I want to change the world and become this massive green advocating man. I just wanted a change.
I like the fact that renewables was a new sector and I’m very aware that when you get into new sectors early it can accelerate your career and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to get into it. But mainly it was a change, I didn’t want to continue working in that kind of thing and I wanted to was a new challenge really.
Vikram (16:26) Of for me, I like Solar because if you go to the atomic weapons establishment where they make the Trident or Network Rail, they’ll have thousands of engineers. There’s already established processes. just, you are one of the many people there. But with Solar, the reason why it attracted me was you can learn from building blocks, from the very basics to very complex. So that’s why, you know, I’ve stayed in the industry for so long.
But how did your light source period come to an end? And how did you end up moving to Equitix? Who are Equitix?
Brett Baber (17:00) Well, light sources, think, I mean, one of the things I’ll say about being in the military is that, like I say, you end up being quite focused to get to an end point or to a certain level. So I think when you’re at light source quite early on and you’re able to grow and you’re growing quite quickly and after a few years, you’re a bit more in management or this way, you kind of you realize there’s suddenly a ceiling and that ceiling is going to slow what I thought was my career path down at the time.
rightfully or wrongfully, I decided at that point that I’d leave. Then I went to join a business, Equitex, who are a private fund infrastructure. They predominantly were doing pension funds and doing
investment into hospitals and universities, those kind of long-term paybacks. And I think they just dipped their foot into renewables. And I was looking for something different from O If I was honest, I wanted to grow my kind of commercial bias a bit more and just learn a bit more. And again, just for personal growth, really. And I was lucky enough to end up at Equifix under Ian Davidson, who used to be at Solar Century.
And to me, I think that is where my career really felt like it started. You know, it wasn’t nothing to do with LightSource, but I felt like that was where my career actually started. So Ian spent a lot of time supporting me at my time at Epix. And yeah, I’ve got a lot of time for Ian and I, and I always will have. He really…
taught me the commercial bias that I know today. He taught me how to understand contracts properly. He understood me all the financial elements that went with asset management. Technically, I was doing engineering, so I understood the technical side, but jumping from that ship into another was a really steep learning curve. I remember after probably my first year at Equitix, I had a break. was like, that was a tough year. That was hard work.
But then at the same vein, was like, I don’t want to slow down. I really didn’t want to slow down. yeah, and actually it’s had faith in me. I went from being a technical manager to one of the main general managers looking after their solar and onshore wind portfolios. Yeah, a really good time for me. And I would have continued to stay there had we not been hit by COVID probably. ⁓ And that’s when your mindset.
start thinking and you have time to consider where you want to go in your career, I suppose, and what you want to do. And you want to spend more time with family at the time I was commuting into London, you know, most days, you know, so yeah, yeah, Ektik was an amazing business. Yeah, I’ve got I’ve got no, bad words about them at all. They really looked after me and mentored me and supported me into a job I really wouldn’t have found myself in these kind of positions today.
Vikram (20:14) Absolutely. you know, I don’t know who said this and I could probably credit this later on, but I remember thinking driving all over the place between 2012 and 2015, you know, that sometimes nothing happens for an eternity and sometimes an eternity happens in a few moments. And it was that kind of period 2012, 2013, 2014, the Olympics 2012, we had London offshore wind farm happening. We had the first massive scale solar farms.
So, you know, people were keeping up with a lot of changes in feed-in tariffs, anti-dumping duty and in position of minimum import prices, ⁓ then change new rock schemes. So just to keep up was tough. But it was a good time and you have to enjoy the good times is my reflection of the last decade or so. And I remember walking in the rain, in the mud, was all the solar farms were always built during the worst possible time. I remember losing my boots at Cowdown solar farm.
I believe you had some sort of involvement there, right?
Brett Baber (21:17) Yeah, no, was one of the sites under the monitoring. over the ship holders. 50 megawatts at the time, it was one of the biggest single sites I looked after, just based outside or just inside Hampshire. Trying to the technology on that now. I think it was, I it might have been Solamax, but I’m not 100 % sure. It might be one of the last Solamax or it might have changed something else. I really can’t remember what the technology was right now. But yeah, that was an interesting project just because it was at the time it was
considered big.
Vikram (21:50) Absolutely. And I work a lot in Switzerland where Solamax were from. I remember, I won’t mention all the stories of what we go up to in the evening, but I remember taking Solamax to the factory and then the following morning they were going under, was, you know, hard to fathom. What were your key learnings from Cowd and Solar Farm and what sort of involvement did you have?
Brett Baber (22:12) At that stage, my involvement was definitely off tools. It was more commercial management. The process there was predominantly still the fact process. We were in that handover from the actual EPC fully to the owner. These things always come with their own issues.
That was my biggest focus for Cadaan, is getting a 50 megawatt through the fact process and make sure it’s kind of ticked all the boxes. And it is, it’s a good site, it’s a successful site and they have good results from there and yeah, it’s in a good location as well. So yeah.
Vikram (22:52) You’ve said something very important then a few people have joked the Arnold have mentioned this on previous podcasts, the fact process for people that are young and new and that just entering the industry and ⁓ non-technical people. know, FAC is final acceptance certification. How did you come across this process? Did you develop it yourself? Did you gain this from suppliers or partners?
Brett Baber (23:15) No, I mean, this was something inherited by the time I was working on the process. It was already working in place. I’m not sure where the first one’s come from, essentially it’s a two-year handover from the UPC into the asset owners. It just means that they can have a site generating work and they may have some teething problems. They may have some planning issues they still need to resolve and they get a bit of time to do that.
and you have an intermediate certificate as well. they agree to hit a certain level by the end of that year. So the process is a bit laborious because it’s basically checking, tracking through works and stuff like that. But it is fundamental to making sure that, you know, what was agreed is in place on solar farms. So it works. It’s, yeah, like I say, it is a heavy, heavy process because there’s so many, you one of the best comparisons I’ve ever had with working on wind and solar was when a guy went out.
So, so it’s a process that we’re bound to be seeing back again soon. We’ve got the new phases of build going on in the UK now, and without a doubt, they will be a fact process. If not slightly renamed to something different, it will still be the same process. It’s that that allow.
of time to complete the project to its fullness. Sometimes it doesn’t always work. Sometimes the EPC goes, we have some issues with this, we’re not going to able to complete this. Here is a set amount of money to offset that we didn’t finish that work. Then it becomes a bit of an agreement then between the asset owners and the EPCs to how they’ll manage that financially really. It tends to end up pretty amicably, must admit. Not everyone, but in general terms, it’s
the contracts fulfilled but through that process. So I hope that plays out.
Vikram (25:09) Absolutely. I run a small business called Ventus. We are agents in the UK for a massive cable factory with 400 employees. They should belong to a PLC called Leone in the past. The name Ventus means wind in Latin. I wanted to look for something renewables when I registered the company, it became available. I was trying to work on offshore wind farms. It’s interesting you make the comparison between moving and non-moving parts. There are a lot of moving parts. There’s salt water and wind.
But the reason why I kind of gave up on wind and jumped full head first into solar is because in wind, the OEMs do the certification, know, like Vestas or Siemens, they’ve got everything type tested in a dry environment. The wind turbines arrive and you have to assemble with solar. are integrating the system as we go. and, and you said something very important about the fact that finally accepted certification process. And the reason why it’s so vital.
is because the industry’s been a boom and bust solar coaster. You’ve had people who are highly technical, highly experienced, been there for 20, 30 years. Some people were academics in this area as well. And suddenly they’ve disappeared or decided they don’t want to do EPC anymore or they’ve been taken over and now they want to go back to being developers. there are now, there is our situation where there’s a shortage of VPCs in the market. And, but development has been very, very immense because after Brexit, the construction started to slow down.
And developers less CAPEX intensive. there’s a huge amount of developers who are now starting to go into build and for them is completely new. know, what is the fact process? Where do you start? How do you keep a control on quality? So what you said is very, very vital because, you know, people that work in O some of us don’t see how intense the work environment was, you know, the politics.
with a feed-in tariff, either you’re twiddling your thumbs doing nothing and suddenly you’ve got 300 megawatts to build and there’s not enough hours in the day.
Brett Baber (27:10) certain date as well. I remember that mad March. It was absolutely crazy, it? the end of it, you’ve got to have it connected and generating before you can get the FIT tariff or the ROC payments, whatever. It was a really heck I remember never booking any holiday between March and April.
Vikram (27:25) I worked through my holidays because the money was too good to say no to. I’ve said this before, I received a letter of witness by Xi Jinping and David Cameron. said to him, Mrs, cancel the holiday, need to do this. in Cowden’s prime example, it’s a massive project, but was one of several projects happening at the same time. And when you look at some of the research online, we need to do something crazy like 75 terawatts.
of solar by 2050 and the whole world is in one terawatt, you know, even though the numbers were massive, they are not even a decimal point. You know, I think we’re doing like less than 1 % of our energy. The UK 10 years ago used to use 400 terawatt hours of electricity. Someone mentioned on a four site blog, you know, now we have 50 terawatt hours. You know, it’s nothing in the general scheme of things, but also massive at the same time. Do you want to go a bit more into
how you went into lockdown and what happened, how did the journey with Equotex come to an end for you? ⁓
Brett Baber (28:30) I mean, it was just circumstantial. you know, before, I kind of remember Ian Davidson making a comment like, oh, this kind of disease going around looks like it’s getting pretty serious. I can imagine as not being able to come to work. And I was thinking, that’s ridiculous. There’s no way the government is going to stop the whole country coming to work, stopping going to work. then, yeah, suddenly no one’s allowed to travel. The big announcement from Boris and there we were working from home all the time.
And it was that flip from having a team around you all the time to being at home all the time and working all the time. it was fine at first. But again, I think that little itch got in the back of my head. don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of opportunities to leave Equitix within that time to go somewhere else. But I really was happy there. But it did change when I started working from home. You ended up
working extra hours, longer hours, not because of the company, just because you’re at home and you feel like you need to do more hours. I just felt that then became a bit the norm. ⁓ I just really wanted a change. I felt like probably again, I’ve got as much commercial training as I was going to get out of Eptics. I couldn’t see I was going back to London anytime soon. One of the biggest drives for me is I enjoyed working in the city. ⁓
you know, having a really kind of busy job. when that all came to an end, it just gave you time to reflect. And then obviously I started seeing my children more and taking them to clubs and the reality of, actually, I’m not sure I really want to do all those things I thought I enjoyed like traveling into London because my children are growing up and all those things, you just have a change of mindset. So yeah, so I decided that, you know, it was time for me to move on. I didn’t really know 100 % what
wanted to do. I mean, I had the O &M experience and I had asset management experience at that point. During all that stage, I’ve always been quite vocal in solar anyway. I’d always been at the steering groups and done talks and stuff. I’d always been out there. So I thought my options were really mine. I could go anywhere. Eventually, I found the company of Liam and Nathan and they were
probably a year or so into running DES and they asked me at a time that I really needed a challenge in life, they asked me to come and join them and yeah, it was a really, really nice experience to have two guys actually call you up and say, would you come and help us out for a little while? So they say, yeah, so I went then went and joined DES doing the development really and commercial management.
Vikram (31:16) Before we go into that, you’d raise an important point that will resonate with a lot of people with me at least, which is you work for this massive financial firm, Equitex, finance is huge industry. think something crazy like 29 trillion in London, ⁓ don’t quote me in the numbers, but I’ve read it’s huge. you’ve got this massive opportunity with this financial sort of developer or investor, etc. ⁓
and then suddenly you’ve come to this realization that everyone has that I could spend more time with my kids. I could work from home. I don’t need to lose four hours a day on travel. Would you say it be right to say it was time with family that persuaded you to not go into London anymore?
Brett Baber (31:59) Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, it was. mean, financially, I took a cut for that, but it was, I absolutely understood that would be the case. But, you know, ⁓ I just felt that I’d missed a lot of, you know, tucking my children in or seeing them to school. I was getting up early and by the time I got home, they were very in bed or now going to bed. So yeah, it was really that impact of seeing them more. But actually it was just my social kind of, you know, it built up our relationships. You know, I now spend
more time with my children generally because of that whole experience and something that really I’m quite thankful for. And like you, I spend a lot of time running my children around to golf or other piano lessons or other kind of clubs. it’s actually really enjoyable. It’s more enjoyable than work. you don’t realize that when you’re in, like you say, you’re working for a really big business. You don’t forget about it, but you certainly get blinkered to it. So when you were suddenly removed from that environment, was just like, actually,
Yeah, the important things I think is what most people’s comments were at the time. The important things in life became obvious and stuff. So I never felt like moving house, but yeah, I certainly didn’t feel like commuting long hours all the time again. So that was certainly the focus.
Vikram (33:12) And that’s a big, big, big change because, you know, I’ve worked in LAP, I worked in Honeywell, I worked at Cable and Wireless and there is a huge work culture in the US where people work sometimes six or seven days, same in China as well. And, you know, I’ve taken a massive pay cut to spend time with the kids who run a football team for my son to play tennis with my daughter. as they’re becoming teenagers and need me less, I’m kind of glad because they’re never going to be young again. You’re never going to get this time again. You’ve got the rest of your life to
to make money, but it’s important to reflect that this was a luxury not available to very many people before the COVID. was only sales reps or very senior managers or very key people that work from home. If you were someone that worked in an office, you were expected to be there because, you know, why are you working on your own? So that is a huge change. So I won’t dwell too much on that, but what’s interesting for me is how you met Liam and how you formed a relationship.
Brett Baber (34:06) Yeah, so I remember I met Liam years ago with Lightslors. He was obviously doing some work for Solar Century at time. So that’s one of my first kind of introductions as a brief, know, Solar Century guy there, name’s Liam. That was my first kind of introduction to them and then working with Ian Davison. And then I got to know that both Liam and David were working with him at Solar Century. So when I
naturally left Equitex and was looking for businesses to, I was doing some consulting originally and I was looking at some other business support. Liam and Dave was just one of the first people we kind of got in contact with. I can’t even remember if Liam rang me first or I rang him, but I certainly needed some work doing on some solar farms and yeah, it was just me. So I thought I’d reach out to those guys. So that was my first real kind of engagement was them, was actually asking them to do some work for me. Yeah, and it kind of started from there.
Vikram (35:01) And you mentioned I’ve got notes here just to have some sort of structure, you join as a Bit Develop Manager, you got promoted to being the Managing Director. You mentioned there was explosive growth with Dez. Are you able to paint a picture about what you mean by explosive growth? ⁓
Brett Baber (35:19) We came out of a time where not just the COVID, but like I say, solar had been stale for a couple of years. There was no development. Everyone had left and it was just managing this. So it got very, very slow. And then what happened is suddenly everyone wanted a solar farm built or everyone needed work catching up on. And like dynamic energy, like Liam and Nathan, you know, were on the tools. were out all the time. went from really…
steady work and quite frankly, the first year is scratching around for some work to it being a really solid booked up and in demand business. it was explosive in terms of workload. Then ultimately, you have that balance of trying to recruit sustainably because it’s a self-funded business. You’ve got to rewind slightly and look at this business was funded from
Liam and Dave are just putting some money in their bank account and trying to do some work themselves. I don’t think they ever expected it to be the business as is today. And that is kudos to their working testament. And actually recruiting the right people. They went and recruited David Williamson when he left Solar Century, who is just probably the most hard-working ops manager I think I’ve ever met in my life. He just never puts the phone down and never stops working.
So they went and recruited correctly in him and they were then billed out into correct engineers and the right subcontractor to help them build the business. But it’s explosive in terms of for a relatively new business to go from two engineers to an award-winning O business today. ⁓
Vikram (37:05) Yes, it’s highly, most businesses fail, right? So we’ve got these action heroes that work for the SoulCentury O team, they’ve got a lot on their plate. Suddenly, we’ve got COVID and everything and then they meet me and saying they want to start their own business. And I thought, yeah, these are great guys, they’ve come across really senior and I know what they’re talking about.
It wasn’t until they hired you and David Williamson, who I’ve worked with for a century in the past, who was one of the key people, whenever you saw his name in your inbox, you know you were getting a purchase order. And it was usually a big one. So when David Williamson suddenly joined Dez, you’ve joined Dez as well from Equitex, you start to take your friends a bit more serious. But for people that are not part of our media network or media industry,
Are you able to tell us what does stand for? What are they as a business? And are you able to comment on what’s so special about Daz and Liam that they can just start a business from nothing in the worst possible time and get to, as you say, explosive growth?
Brett Baber (38:06) I mean, they’re crazy, right, to start a business during that time. But fortune favors the brave, guess is what they say. But look, I mean, it is really testament to their character that not only are they robust, solid, knowledgeable engineers, that they are hardworking, they are committed to sites, they were a bit of a fresh air because if you asked them to go and do something, they would do all those things and more and send you a report. And it would just be so timely. They were just very sleek in what they were doing.
Yeah, so Dynamic Energy Solutions was born out ⁓ of those guys. ⁓ Initially as a kind of support partner to the industry, I think is how it started. And then when I joined and David had joined, it was just a matter of trying to get business wherever we could. So we started pushing hard into our own rooftop development, supporting more O &M’s and trying to cast them out to work with more people.
And on top of that, we found that there was a real niche for repowering. It was something that worked out really well for the business in terms of how we scale our staff and our locations. It turned out to be just the most logical choice. So we really spent a lot of time focusing on repowering and what that meant to the clients, the uplifts and what we could get for it. And at a time that, again, we didn’t realize that we always knew repowering was going to be a subject that we needed addressing over the next few years.
I don’t think we really thought it would be that quickly coming at those. It really turned from one repowering project one year to four the next to, I don’t know how many they’ve got now, but plenty of repowering projects. On top of that, they’re HV experts. really are like when you’re stuck on a solar farm and you can’t find the answers, they are.
They are the last chance to try and work it out. And if they don’t know, then it is something really, really bizarre. And I think that’s what always appealed to me about working with Liam and Dave and I always knew whatever I could bring in as a business for them, they would be able to deliver it. I think it was one of the most secure feelings I ever had is trying to sell something is that I didn’t have to worry about particularly what that work was as long as it was,
financially worked for the business and it would keep our guys busy. yeah, they are phenomenally hardworking guys and they thoroughly deserve everything they’ve got with their business. it’s certainly not a testament to me, it’s testament to how they look after their staff, how they treat people. And yeah, an absolutely diamond of a business and one what was a very difficult decision to leave and a very
part wrenching decision to leave because Liam, Dave and David, all those guys, and Michael included, they’ve all become friends of mine and long will we be friends ever since. They’re just generally really good guys, not just for the business but in their personal lives as well. It’s really hard not to want to work for them and like them as people.
Vikram (41:16) Absolutely. And DEST stands for Dynamic Energy Solutions, right? Solutions, Dynamic Energy Solutions, okay. So I find it very inspiring to meet Dathan at first and talk about repowering and then Liam straight after, because it was during the lockdown period and people started to work from home and hardly ever seeing daylight and many people, they were having facing a lot of uncertainty.
Brett Baber (41:19) solutions.
Vikram (41:41) It was a crazy period because we had deliveries coming from Switzerland and Turkey and the trucks had to be stopped because they want to fumigate the trucks against Covid. It was a surreal time and if you wanted to get someone to come out, people were scared or didn’t want to come out. So was very inspiring to meet Nathan and Liam and whatever you say to them, they will say, okay, we’ll be there tomorrow morning.
Brett Baber (42:03) They
move mountains for their clients and I think that’s, it’s quite impressive, the way they can get around it and run their business in such a way. Like you say, it is inspiring. It was lovely to be the public. The long way they continue, I genuinely mean that.
Vikram (42:23) And the drive is motivating. But before we go into your period leaving Des, you know, one of the goals of this podcast is, you know, because if you want to solve climate change, you know, I’m starting to appreciate what it means starting to mean now. I think we’ve had the hottest 2023 on record ever. You know, I’m probably not clever enough to truly understand climate science, but I’m starting to take notice that it is very, very serious. Like in the out, sometimes you don’t get snow, enough snow for skiing, you
actual changes but some housekeeping when you say repowering for new people that we want to motivate to enter the industry what do you mean by repowering how do you understand this
Brett Baber (43:06) I think from a marketing level, it’s kind of re-engineering the solar farm. Essentially, it’s almost a new solar farm. If you were to remove all the inverter stations and then replace them for new models within the six years, 10 years they’ve been on site, obviously equipment’s come a long way from them. So obviously better yields. They also have better tracking on them.
know, less downtime for tracking strings. So there’s multiple reasons for doing it. It’s a financial, financially, you get the payback. can’t remember what the full term is now, but it is pretty quickly. It’s less than five years to get the payback or switch now and invert at this stage. But essentially it’s re-engineering the existing solar farm and uplifting it to make sure it’s not just hits the remaining of its life cycle. You get spare parts from the inverters that you’re taking out for the existing rest of the solar farm.
and then you get the uplift from that substation as well. It’s a process that we didn’t expect maybe inverters to fail quite as quickly as they did in the industry, but it was a consideration in most people’s models to do a repower at some stage. The other issue we had is manufacturers disappearing or pulling out of the market because it wasn’t feasible to them. So they then got products that
outside of warranty and with no manufacturing support. So there’s other factors to think about in terms of reparing is if I can’t get the support from the inverter anyway, how am going to get spare parts? So you have to strip a bank out to give you spare parts to your remaining site, as well as just making sure you’ve got longevity and further warranty going forward, a bit more protection. So there’s lots of pros and cons on it. In fact, Dynamic Energy Solutions done an amazing video on reparing. suggest you go check it out if you haven’t.
Vikram (44:59) I will do, I will do. We are very fortunate in Switzerland at Stude Cable AG, formerly Leoni, because we’ve got 400 colleagues and we’ve got a massive R &D workforce. We have our own scientists because we run our own irradiation center where we accelerate particles. These guys are ex-ABB and they’re electronically very, very trained. Some of these colleagues unfortunately retired, which has been a massive loss to us. But the early objections from
nerdy point of views like how do you get the electronic components like capacitors and resistors to have an inverter that lights the life of the solar farm from from your point of view is are the intervals like five years or 10 years 15 years when you should be replacing that inverters
Brett Baber (45:44) I mean, one thing is probably too much to get into is that we’re not fully aware of the longevity of the new inverters. think some of the older issues was technology probably not suitable for the environment. There’s lots of factors to consider before you can just put a finite number of 5, 10 years. But I think in terms of financial modeling, certainly, you should look at doing a repower at 10 years. And there may be.
some requirements to do it as early as five years. I’ve certainly seen it on some solar farms which are about five years old that we started reef powering. So it’s hard to put a finite number into doing this.
Vikram (46:22) We will do more technical podcasts in the future. I’ve done one already with dr. Jothi Roy So it is it is and also with honored. It’s an immense area because the technology is changing so rapidly and According to dr. Roy there is now OEMs out there that make inverse specifically for repowering So we won’t go too much into that. We need a couple of hours only on inverters. Otherwise But winning the O &M of the year award
at Dez, you know, how did that come about? Who said that these guys are award worthy?
Brett Baber (46:55) Me probably. mean, was probably my job is shouting about that. mean, that was probably, if I’m honest, probably one of my strongest self points. I know a lot of people in the industry and I do like to shout about how good we were. yeah, so I mean, yeah, there was an opportunity to nominate, you know, dynamic energy and I just felt it was the right time. You know, I remember being stood at solar storage in one of the little one meter by one meter hubs trying to generate generate business the following year, being there with our own proper
⁓ proper exhibition stand and just growing and the third year it just felt the right time to try and top an award. It’s like the dream isn’t it? Like a startup business who was in the startup zone is now winning O of the year. So I thought it was an amazing end to my time at Dez. So I’m really glad that I could get that nomination in for them. And again.
The credit is really down to those guys. There was no embellishments in my nomination, it was true. They genuinely are liked and respected by their clients. They do excellent work. So it was well deserved. I was very happy that they let me come on stage and collect that award with them because I’d already done shit by that stage by the time we won. it was a nice accolade to leave on.
Vikram (48:14) There’s a Scottish comedian called Billy Connolly. might know him already. I’d listened to lot of audio books during the lockdown and I think his book was bestseller called Windswept and Interesting. And he says, if people don’t give you a medal, then invent your own. So if you’re doing business development and you’re pushing the business, of course, let’s go do this. But was hard to keep up on your LinkedIn feed. I admit I delete LinkedIn just to not get addicted on constantly screen scrolling and tiring myself out.
Every time I reinstall the app or login there will be something that you guys are winning. So you won O &M of the year and then you went to some X-Forces event as well?
Brett Baber (48:52) Yeah, no, that was a really surreal one. yeah, I got an email come through to say I’ve been nominated for ⁓ an engineering award for ⁓ X-Forces in Business, which is a great award ceremony running in London. And that was quite nice just to know I’d been nominated. So that was the first kind of level into that. then, leading up to July, I then got told I was shortlisted and I’d have to attend. So yeah, I went to the swanky
the ballroom in London and yeah, sat there with loads of doctorates and PhDs around this table shortlisted for an engineering and thinking this is never going to happen. You know, I remember having a call with Dave and he was like, in for a chance. was like, no way. It’s nice to be nominated. I remember saying, I’ll get, I’ll take the pictures of the stage to show dynamic energy, you know, on the stage and that never in a million years thinking that I would win. then, yeah, and suddenly my name was called out and
Yeah, then the rest was a bit blurry, I’m honest with you. It was a very surreal experience to be nominated in the first place and then taken award home for engineering, which, yeah, probably a bit tongue in cheek. I’m not sure how many times in my lifetime a screwdriver has actually been in my hand. But in terms of why I won it, it was more around being ex-forces in renewables. I I have to tip my hat to renewables again. It’s because I’d been working in renewables that supported that win.
But yeah, it was a really great experience and it’s both really humbling and big-headed at the same time to receive these things. yeah, it was a really nice experience.
Vikram (50:30) Because you can put yourself forward for an award, but people have to vote for you and you guys were existing in an industry with billion euro companies like Biowire and you know, could be Electrics also, one we’re now is very big and you guys are in rubbing shoulders with massive organizations and so people are voting for you. So it’s a testament to you and to your team, Dathan, Liam, David Williamson. then you had this great chemistry and a great team and great potential.
suddenly you turn up at Be Electric, how did you meet Mr Barry Benny and do you want to tell us bit about that?
Brett Baber (51:06) Yeah, so I’ve known Barry for over 10 years. Yeah, I’ve worked with him previously at LightSource and then another business we worked together. And we’ve always stayed in contact regularly, met up every year and we remain quite close. So yeah, that was kind of my relationship with Barry. then, yeah, Electric had had a lot of changes and I was asked if I would go along and take a challenge off.
looking after and building on the O &M team. So that was the start of that conversation. And yeah, like I said, it was a really hard decision at the time to one, have to leave Dez, who I did have a great job, a you know, great package with, and I had no complaints, genuinely had no complaints. you know, they respected me and I respected them back. it was really hard to make that call today and just say that I’m really sorry, but I’ve been offered this and it wasn’t
it wasn’t financially led at this base. was to me, it was the opportunity to go work for what is now a global business ⁓ and see if I could stand on my own two feet in a similar role, but probably more people and probably slightly more responsibility. So I saw it as a really big challenge. And more importantly, as an opportunity to join a really well-established business who is having this amazing growth at the moment. again, I just saw it as just a huge
career opportunity that they don’t come around all the time. So when they do, you try and grab them with both hands.
Vikram (52:41) Absolutely. And as you said earlier, people say there’s no moving parts in solar, but it is a massive under construction undertaking, you know, and every country is different. In the future, we will do episodes on the electric story in itself. You know, it was a key account for us for my colleagues. because the UK gets so much rain, we have high groundwater level, we developed a product water blocked main DC and LVAC cable.
specifically with UK engineers and my colleagues in Switzerland, Mr. Furgi Gensu, Jan Wolfgang went and sold it to Be Electric for 350 megawatt Lyman Dale solar farm. so we have a lot of background Be Electric, they were sold to RWE and now I think they’ve got a new owner. But for people that are new to meeting you, do want to tell us a bit about Be Electric and about Barry specifically, what kind of business they are, what they do?
Brett Baber (53:37) Yeah, mean, yes, electric have been around for over 10 years in the UK. They’re a global business. They’re established in Germany, Norway, Denmark, France, Italy, Africa. So it’s a very well established global business. In the UK, it was one of the original kind of EPCs. And they, as a business, tended to have longer term O contracts built in as part of their EPC.
So they had a slight niche to the normal guys who were going out getting five-year contracts and stuff. And they managed to hold on to their own projects for quite some years, 10 years, and never actively looked for third-party work. just looked up their own sites and became this quite small O &M business looking after their own built sites for asset owners.
Barry joined, I think six years ago, believe, I have to check with him his numbers, but I believe it’s about six years ago. And then there was an opportunity to really change, like I say, after the first couple of years of ⁓ solar being stale, an opportunity came available to them to build again. Barry’s kind of, know, marched forward with Belletrig, not just Barry, whole scene, think you’ve got Chris Abel and Ruben Martin.
Joe, they were all in the same team pushing forward. But they’re now really established as an EPC. Obviously, they’re several projects in the UK as we speak. And again, I won’t go into the full details of those. But it then has broadened the market for us. So we as an ONMC need to get bigger because we’re to have more megawatts coming in. But the more defined choice on top of that was Barry decided that they would finally approach the third party market.
and start looking after third party O &M projects. So now that decision was made, I think, tail end of 22. And then they started winning some projects with the well-known asset management company, but we’ve got some contracts that they’re up to. I think we’re up to about 400 megawatts around that right now. But the real growing pain is coming now.
at the end of the year, definitely possibly pushing for a gigawatt with other stuff we’re tendering on at the moment. we’re at a stage of growing pains right now. yeah, Electric is this business who has been around a long time and ⁓ decided to probably go stand along with the big guys such like LightSource and Res and PSHs and see if we can.
play our part in the industry. think there’s enough in the market for everybody. There’s enough work that we should as businesses be able to sustain another one of us in the market and hopefully doing a good job.
Vikram (56:39) Absolutely. Confidentiality is a big thing if you want to work in any big business. People have to be able to trust you and certain things have to stay between the people that they’re discussed with. And also, I want to speak a bit about EPCs. That’s where all the action seems to be in terms of responsibility, in terms of the engineering, in terms of the maintenance. There is a lot of companies that get roped into being EPCs and they haven’t got the capacity and they do struggle.
But Be Electric has a very important brand name. You have a very interesting chemistry with your colleagues in Germany and other countries. We agreed before this call we won’t mention specific precise numbers to protect commercial sensitive information. But in terms of growth, in terms of employees, are you able to give us an idea about the UK team?
Brett Baber (57:27) Yeah, mean, yeah, I mean, the easiest one without definitive numbers is beginning of 2023, there was less than 20 people working for Belletrik UK. And to this date, there is over 70. And that’s an ever growing number. And I think the target is to be around 120 by summer of this year. So
You can imagine that’s created its own tasks on its own, but it is a massive ⁓ period of growth for Belletrik, the biggest within the UK. Belletrik UK, definitely.
Vikram (58:01) and you are head of O ⁓ you able to give us an idea of your day to day role, what sort things you get involved with at Be Electric?
Brett Baber (58:08) Well, I try and plan my days, but they’re always scuffered because that is O for you.
Vikram (58:13) the NATO and then we have to run when something goes wrong you have to respond right
Brett Baber (58:17) What I love about O is that there is no two days the same. ⁓ Every day is different. There’s always something. Before I joined this call, we have some stray dogs on a site. We’ve never dealt with that before, but there you go. It’s an interesting. I’ve had horses before, but never dogs. So every day is different. And I do love that. I love the fact that from an O point of view, I still get to have an engineering mind and a commercial boss. So my day to day really is looking after
three managers on me. have David Maribel and Dom underneath me and they look after various teams. So I have a portfolio management team and monitoring team who’s looked after by one manager. I then have ⁓ the health and safety and project teams and then I have the full-on O and HPE teams. So we’re split across the board. We try and do as much as we can in-house as an O I think it’s one of our bits that all of our engineers in terms of our
our training going forward, all have the right levels for the right site and stuff. So yeah, it’s definitely been quite painful.
Vikram (59:23) And I’ve got notes saying you have plans to reach a gigawatt by the end of 2024 and expanding your team according to that. Is this a gigawatt in EPC, gigawatt in O &M? What do you mean?
Brett Baber (59:34) So I think that, yeah, so I mean, I think the world’s the limit really in terms of what we all reach for at the moment. I don’t know what the full EP scale is, I don’t know those numbers right now. In terms of ⁓ yeah, we’re not necessarily targeting it, but I think, yeah, I think it’s reasonable to expect us to be in or around that by the end of the year, just with the projects we already are building and facing and the tenders that we already know we’re involved in.
mean, pushing the market slightly now because we’re looking at best projects and co-location. So another integrity to add or another complexity, sorry, to add to the mix. yeah, we’ve got to grow accordingly. And obviously that comes with its own issues, as you know, the technical resources in the UK is pretty low right now. And we’re in a bit of an auction for engineers. it is tough to try and grow your team, make sure you train them correctly and ethically.
not in a stage where they just train them and they’re gone straight away. So there is this real balance within my job of making sure, again, going back to my early agriculture days, it’s not just the work we’re managing, it’s the people as well. yeah, but actually I’ve got a really good team below them and they’ve always had a good name. And the real drive over the last year is fundamental to people like Alastair and Barry who run the business.
So yeah, it’s going to be both interesting headaches and ⁓ tantrums throughout the year, but that is the world of O ⁓ It’s an ever moving boost. There’s always faults, there’s always issues, and there’s always something going wrong. And with the current climate crisis as we see, you will see in wetter weathers, which is more trips for us, it’s more cool-outs, we’re seeing more wind, we’re seeing more challenges as we get from year to year. ⁓
not including the aging equipment or all the other issues that we’ve got. So it’s a really demanding role, but it’s fully enjoyable, I must admit. Like I say, it’s every day is different. But I really like working with across all boards. I like being involved with the client management team and being part of that and seeing how we’re adapting that. We’ve had to put in a lot of systems into place because obviously with growth,
with 20 people, you can talk amongst yourself and do most of your business on email and Excel. So, you know, one of my fundamentals for the next 12 months is building out on the system that we’ve put in place to manage the engineers and schedule the work and reporting. You know, then got to look at, you know, building, you know, commercial dashboards for clients and stuff like that. So I’m involved in a broad spectrum across the O business.
But yeah, it’s where I like to be. It’s a bit of everything and yeah, it’s very interesting.
Vikram (1:02:31) So,
Sq is, know, to hit your ambitious growth plans in the market of labor shortages, you know, you need to attract good people. Yeah. And so, in terms of the sort of people you to work with, are you able to give us an idea about that? And can you share specifically what processes and procedures you’re implementing to attract and train and retain good people to hit your gigawatt plus target?
Brett Baber (1:03:00) Yeah, I mean, it’s a really, really tough subject if I must be a vikram. But I mean, internally, what we’re trying to do is reduce traveling time for engineers, more regionalization ⁓ and ⁓ less sites and less megawatts to look at per engineer. Obviously, there is a fine balance to what you can pay your engineers compared to your market competition. we’re trying to recruit at the higher level.
really solid industrial experts in solar. So the real finite PV, HP experts, those kind of people, we’re looking to cement those into our business within the regionalization of the teams. We’re looking to grow the teams further. Unfortunately, like you say, it’s hard to either convince someone to come from ⁓ house bashing or from a domestic market into standing in the middle of the field. So I think I have a slightly different approach to it. I think there’s
probably for us and our focus again for the training team is to bring in novices and try and cross train people from other industries. And I have to look at myself, I came from another industry 10 years ago and if I can do it, I’m pretty sure anyone else can. So I think it’s thinking outside the box. can’t just keep looking with inside our own market now because it’s saturated already. We’ve already got all the engineers. So I think it’s about bringing in the right mentality, the right people.
to do the jobs outlay. And I’d like to see us in a world where there’s probably modularized training within the industry. we know that whatever we call them, a ⁓ general engineer can do X, Y, Z job, HB can do those. And then it should help the workforce balance out. I don’t know if there’s a full requirement for a PV engineer, every PV engineer that is to be an electrician. think there is some.
some unique things we can do around it to reduce the workload. And we’re also going to look at the future of innovation, and what we’re to do to reduce time on site and how we can use better monitoring and technology to support us delivering a more robust product to the client.
Vikram (1:05:12) The unfortunate reality we have is because of COVID, like yourself, you’re quite young, but people have taken the stock of their careers, their lives, and we’ve had a massive workforce disappear. We’ve had obviously Brexit as well. because of that, there is a natural labor shortage across all sectors, not only solar, but solar itself is very, very exciting because the energy has just started. It’s about a terawatt within the 75 terawatt goals that we may have worldwide.
and already is one of most efficient and the lowest cost ways of generating energy. So there is that vision we can sell to ⁓ young people or mature people that want to enter the industry. And as we come towards the end of our podcast, the most important question I want to ask you is, know, what is your vision and what do you see as the future of solar photovoltaics?
Brett Baber (1:06:07) I think for me, think we have to look at a more balanced world. think there is definitely a call for the government to be more relaxed around solar. I don’t know if we’re in a world where we need funding so much anymore. I think we’ve proven that we’re an industry can stand on our own feet, but I think they certainly need to look at relaxing the rules a bit more around it. There’s a lot of back…
press around so that especially around agricultural land usage as we all know and I’m sure you’ll speak to someone in the future about those kind of things. But there’s a lot of government support that they can do which isn’t financial that I believe should change. So I’d like to see that on the horizon. I’d like to see a more direct route for people wanting to get into the industry. It is a hard industry to get into, although we’re crying out for people. It’s one of those strange anomalies that I find.
once you hire someone that most of my life I’ve been trying to get into the industry for a year or two years and then we wonder why we’re just can’t get in. So we need to have this more direct obvious route in. don’t know how we get that right now. There’s this again, John Davies and other people in the industry thinking about these things. So I see a world where we have that more direct route and a more obvious chain of getting into the industry. More importantly, I think we need to be at a stage where, you know, as a
Vikram (1:07:21) Okay.
Brett Baber (1:07:27) as a country, need to start harnessing our own power. And I think that that is to a certain degree, when it’s affordable, should be at our own home to a certain degree. And I think there should be, I know the government is supporting doing heat pumps. But I mean, there is an element of putting solar on your own roof is quite empowering outside of it being financially rewarding over time. It’s quite empowering to know that you’ve got your own power. So I think there should be this mindset change as well to
every house probably should consider where practical to have solar and battery storage to try and help balance that grid out a bit more because it’s going to get worse, know, and more imbalanced as we start putting more grid and more items onto the grid. And we’re already seeing that in delays in the grid. So, and again, I can talk all day on the issues around that. But yeah, I see a future where it’s a bit easier, a bit clearer of where we’re going. I think it is happening. I think we are getting there.
and I’m about talking full politics, think the change is afoot now.
Vikram (1:08:29) I’ve spent so much time in solar that I ask this question myself all the time. I’ve been asking it for last over 15 years. What is the future of solar photovoltaics? What is my own future? Are we destroying agricultural land? Are we doing something unethical? These are things you ask yourself because the moral argument is what you need to have to grow a big team, to have people following you. Solar by all means is not
a bullet because it doesn’t work in the night time, it does cause grid intimacy, it doesn’t work in the winter as well. But every kilowatt hour of solar we generate in the summer or when there’s daylight, there’s less gas that needs to be burned. And specifically, if you care about the environment, you look around you, I’ve researched a lot about agricultural land and food use and we are destroying our environment with fertilizer,
we’re bees, we’re chopping down forests and for what? And this is on the WWF, it’s the animal charity. These are proven research, evidence papers. say on the, most of the land we use in the UK is for growing food for animals, which is actually destroying the environment. And when you take all the nutrients out of the soil, it’s dead, it’s finished. And so if you put solar somewhere where,
York Solar Farm is a pig farm, you know, it can’t be used for agriculture anymore. If you install solar, then you allow the, for crop rotation, you allow the land to recover. So that land argument doesn’t wash anywhere. Of course you have to be ethical and not put solar where people have lovely views out of their window. You know, you have to listen to people and take them forward with you. I’ve certainly enjoyed this conversation and I’ve found from previous podcasts, when you listen again, you realize there are bits that you miss. So I will think deeply about the things you’ve said and
And thanks very much for joining us today.
Brett Baber (1:10:24) Thanks for having me, Vikram. It generally has been a pleasure. It’s always a pleasure to speak to you. Cheers. Cheers.
Vikram (1:10:28) Perfect. Thanks. Thanks, bro.
Vikram (00:01) Welcome to the future of solar photovoltaics podcast. This is our sixth episode in the series today. have the absolute pleasure of welcoming welcoming Jyothi Roy a former visiting professor from Loughborough University who holds a PhD in the solar related field Jyothi welcome
Jyoti (00:19) Thank you. Good morning, Vikram. And it’s really good to be here with you today.
Vikram (00:23) Fantastic. So Jothi, you actually have a doctorate in solar related field. Are you able to give us any detail about that at all?
Jyoti (00:30) Yeah, so that that PhD was on energy yield assessment of different PV modules at different climatic conditions. And I did that PhD from Laffer University at Crest Center for Renewable Energy Systems Technology.
Vikram (00:46) Fantastic and in the past when I was visiting Carnegie in Hamburg I met Chuck Courtney-Sorla who mentioned he’s actually studied under you so you’re actually quite famous in the industry.
Jyoti (00:57) I didn’t know about the famous part of it, but yes, I was teaching an MSc course at Laffer University and that was a very popular course back then when feed-in tariff and other mechanism was available. So yes, quite a few graduates from that course, they used to work for OST, Rena these days and other companies in the renewable sector.
Vikram (01:18) Fantastic and before we go deeper into that, are you able to share any details about your early life and background?
Jyoti (01:26) I grew up in India and in a middle-class family. My father was a school teacher. And one thing really we learned from our childhood that ⁓ there’s no success without hard work. And education is one of the fundamental aspects that we always, always learn ⁓ across our family. So we are three brothers. We all three are engineers. And interestingly,
we all three are related to clean tech sector.
Vikram (01:59) Fantastic and then in terms of your career transition your first job where did you start?
Jyoti (02:04) So after graduating as a manufacturing engineer, I used to work for a production company, foundry company. But I very quickly realized that this is not the right place for me to be in. And I left that job and I moved into the power sector. That was back in early 2000.
And that power sector was to do some industrial research work. yes, passion, think what I learned back then that passion is very important in terms of choosing the career path.
Vikram (02:44) Yes, exactly. And your transition into the solar industry is not something very regular in those days. How did you end up getting into solar?
Jyoti (02:54) So it’s interesting that power sector I mentioned, the research work that I was in, that was in coal industry. So there’s two projects that I was involved. Blending different proportion of different coal from different sources, whether Indian coal or Australian coal or Indonesian coal to test the calorific value. And later on, those combination was used for thermal power plant to generate power.
The other part of the research I was involved there is to create a new product using activated carbon for water filtration system, but all around coal. So darker side of the power sector that I was in. So was there for a couple of years and then I felt something that is not right. And at that point of time, my elder brother was doing his research on green hydrogen.
Vikram (03:34) Right.
Jyoti (03:51) Electrolyzer in the UK. So he guided me for a particular master’s course in Sweden. So I resigned that job and then I went for doing this master’s program in Sweden. So that’s how really I transited initially from ⁓ coal to greener side of the power sector.
Vikram (04:14) Fantastic and before we talk about Sweden, know, water purification, that’s an important topic, you know, even able to give us a bit more detail about that.
Jyoti (04:22) So obviously, if we see today’s challenges related to climate, one thing we should also be talking about water and its challenges that it will face. ⁓ different parts in India, ⁓ drinking water was a challenge. So what we are doing, we are using this activated carbon as a filtration method for water purification system.
Vikram (04:51) And as Sweden, what was your experience of life there? Was this your first time visiting the country?
Jyoti (04:57) very first time visiting country and someone going out of India, not a cold country to going to Sweden. It was absolutely challenging for me in my mind, but I didn’t actually face that much of challenge from cold perspective. Yes, I did live there in minus 26 degrees, but it was very enjoyable. It was a different type of cold in Sweden. And I I remember the day I
came to UK from Sweden, it was minus 15 that day, but that day UK temperature was somewhere in the range of zero or one, but I was feeling more cold here than it in Sweden. So it was different kind of cold. But yeah, no, that was fantastic time for me really be there in Sweden.
Vikram (05:40) Fantastic and I remember 2006 was when it was the World Cup I think when Zidane was sent off in the final and… right, that’s right, yes. I was working in cable and wireless, just about to move into lab cable. For yourself, how did the move to the UK happen for you?
Jyoti (05:58) So I came to UK as an academic visitor to Loughborough University. ⁓ place that I mentioned earlier did my PhD as an academic visitor working in
Tracker, working on tracker, 2006. Tracker was probably one of the very newest thing in solar field. It was a very small tracker with few modules on the top of the tracker, two axis tracker. So that was my move to UK, working on solar.
Vikram (06:32) trackers in tracking the sun right
Jyoti (06:35) Yeah, yeah, the solar tracking system, mounting structure.
Vikram (06:39) fantastic. And what was your memory about it has a cost in those days? Do have any any comparison any any recollections?
Jyoti (06:45) I do not have exact numbers, but it was not just cost, but also availability. was only very few. I handful of one or two companies were producing, but definitely not for commercial applications. It was only very small, few research application tracker was available back then.
Vikram (07:03) And in our past podcast, Mr Stefano Girolami, he mentioned that he moved to the UK to study renewables because there were hardly any courses in Italy at the time. How did you find your transition to Loughborough University as a visiting professor? Was there already courses on renewables or did you have to develop your own one?
Jyoti (07:22) There was a, so that master’s program started, I think it’s early 2000 sometime before I visited Crest. So that master’s program was running and that program not just for solar, all renewables, solar, wind, bio, different other technologies they were covering. And ⁓ yes, that program was very popular. ⁓ It got even more popular when feed-in tariffs started in 2010.
Vikram (07:52) And in terms of Memro projects, know, before we go into deeper discussion, first met you in 2014 at Juvia, major German EBC, I believe. Are you able to give us a bit more details about them? I can see on your LinkedIn you were there for quite a long time.
Jyoti (08:09) Yeah, that’s right. But in terms of my available project, I would actually refer to this tracker project of my research that I was doing for the same reason why I just mentioned about is cost, obviously, availability, size, et cetera. And ⁓ a second project I would mention about a solar hydrogen project. was during my time at UV and ⁓ funded by Innovate UK, one of the
government funding body and it was on the literally the roof of Top Gear Studio. irony is solar power electrolyser producing hydrogen and that was one of the reference project back in 2012 and obviously from ⁓ technical and commercial viability was not there back then which for green hydrogen concept it is gaining more traction.
I would mention a couple of other projects during my time at UV. design and ⁓ currently owned by one of the listed fund and we know that, I know that particular project was one of the highest performing project in that asset. So ⁓ I think designing a good system, procuring good component and building ⁓ in an appropriate way, obviously quality comes at a cost.
but that will have long time bigger value for those projects. So quality design, quality procurement, quality material and quality build, obviously that will give the longevity and sustainability of our industry. And I would also mention about a code of practice published by IET. Version one, I was the co-author of that book that published I think in 2014. And then
a few other projects in my current organization that we do in terms of optimizing assets. Because what we have seen with a feed-in tariff and ROK, we are so busy building, building, building more projects. And then when feed-in tariff came to an end, we realized ⁓ the time that how we really optimize those operational assets. So ⁓ we have implemented this particular solution into different parts of the world. And on average, we have seen
about 8 % uplift in generation. So that is another project I’d to mention. And we do face a lot of debate these days here about land scarcity, et cetera, though I’m not fully buying into those debates in terms of really the land that is utilized for solar is not taking any agricultural land, et cetera. But landfills solar is one of the interesting subject that
is gaining quite a lot of traction. So we are very actively working as a technical advisor, owner’s engineer, doing ⁓ or providing services to landfill solar because this land are no good for anything else. And solar is one of the best way can be utilized. Other advantage for landfill solar projects are greed is already available and the quantum of gas are reducing day by day. Adding solar on those sites are really
getting ⁓ good value for those land, purely from an economical point of view.
Vikram (11:35) So you have ⁓ a lot of UK experience but also a lot of international experience. Before we move on into that, you mentioned that you’ve got 20 gigawatts of career experience in solar. Which countries is that based in roughly?
Jyoti (11:49) I feel really extremely lucky to able to work in different international markets and knowing and seeing what level of complexity, because every market is different. Level of complexity, level of mechanism are different in different markets. So those markets are largely Europe, any really any market that you pick up active for solar weather, obviously UK, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, ⁓ France, and recent days, Romania.
Bulgaria, those are the markets are becoming popular. ⁓ Poland is another market, South Africa. ⁓ In Asian context or Southeast Asian market, Vietnam, Thailand, ⁓ India, Bangladesh. So these are quite a few markets that I have worked with. And during my time at UV, we are a global developer and EPC.
We are involved in two different projects in Europe, Asia and US market. And during my time at Bluefield, so before starting Green Enco, I was at Bluefield and I was involved into project, of course, in the UK, but also in Italy and in Netherlands. then Green Enco really started in 2017, which helped us to really expand our international exposures or my exposure into international market.
for both solar and energy storage projects. So yes, out of that 20 gigawatt, it was quite encouraging for me to be able to see those landscapes.
Vikram (13:29) Right and you mentioned that you achieved 10 % generation uplift on a 300 megawatt solar portfolio in India. Are you able to give us a bit more detail about that? How you achieved this?
Jyoti (13:39) So 2018, that was 2018 and reason actually we started, I started Green Enco ⁓ is when in 2016-17 when feed-in tariff was coming to an end, ROK was coming to an end and I was thinking what to do and during my academic period at Lafayette University I did some algorithms and literally those algorithms in PowerPoint format.
And then I realized probably those algorithms might have some value to the market to optimize asset. And that particular portfolio in India, 300 megawatt of portfolio, we validated those algorithms. It’s really a holistic approach that we take. It’s not just data analysis, very granular level data analysis, but also some level of site intervention.
Vikram (14:23) Mm-hmm.
Jyoti (14:33) by doing some testing on site. So going through the full cycle of exercise, there are three different stages that we go through. Diagnostic stage, where we identify gaps in performance compared to expected values. And then go through a predictive modeling. And then the last part, we call it prescriptive model, but which is nothing but a corrective action very specific to a problem. So going through a full cycle of exercise, we have seen on average 10 % on that particular ⁓ portfolio that we have worked on.
If I take really as a takeaway from this, from financial benefit point of view, we have calculated on that portfolio based on additional revenue from PPA or some liquidity damage, etc. that has been mitigated in one year, that portfolio has resulted an uplift of 20 million pounds. So there’s a huge financial impact that we have seen. And that exercise has resulted of upsetting about 33,000 ton of additional CO2.
emission, ⁓ meaning climate impact.
Vikram (15:37) So Green Enco is your own business. You said you started this in 2017. We will go deeper into that. in terms of your experience at Juve, a major international company and then transitioning to another major fund in Bluefield, what did you take away from those experiences? What was the difference between working for an EPC like Juve and then moving on to a fund like Bluefield?
Jyoti (16:02) I had ⁓ an intention in mind to go full cycle of the life cycle. So I was in academia and then moved into ⁓ UV mode to get my hands dirty. ⁓ development, so huge learning happened in terms of really understanding the development phases, going through different planning processes, grid application processes, et cetera, and then going through the full complexity of EPC.
That was a huge learning for me. I think working, if I take one of the key takeaways in addition to all of this technicality, et cetera, is process, how process would be ⁓ important in executing a really good quality process. So that really, that was a huge learning for me from UB. And then moving towards more of asset management, asset financing side, working with Bluefield.
It me a really huge insight in terms of seeing same things, but from the other side of the table. So knowing really the full cycle and understanding, because there’s nothing right or wrong, depending on which angle you are seeing from. So that gave me a really good perspective in terms of seeing same project, but purely from different angles.
Vikram (17:18) And then what was the major difference? Were you thinking about balancer systems? you thinking about product qualities? Or was it more about EPC warranties and O What was the major paradigm change?
Jyoti (17:33) In terms of really quality assurance, et cetera, ⁓ it was not a huge amount because always, I guess, coming from academic background and me being involved in IEC and IET standard committees. So quality assurance, et cetera, always stays in the delivery that I have done, whether in academia or in EPC or in project financing side of the business. So from that perspective, it was a quite easy transition ⁓ because we are following those best.
best practices ⁓ during the time of EPC ⁓ moving into more project financing stage. So meaning good quality due diligence is absolutely key for sustainability of this industry.
Vikram (18:16) Absolutely and you advertise on your LinkedIn profile, you know, have some involvement with Vikram Solar as well. Are you able to give us a bit more?
Jyoti (18:22) Yeah, Vikram Solar is one of the leading module manufacturers from India and I am associated with them as ⁓ one of the board members. my role there is to support in terms of market, global market landscape, how they are moving, etc. in terms of product roadmap. So more on the Board of Advisors role that support their product and into different markets.
Vikram (18:52) And from your perspective, this applies to Europe as well, know, these companies, they’re trying to localize module production again, but we are facing a juggernaut in China. The level of investment is astronomical in comparison. This is all on the public record. Now people are talking about module prices going below 10 cents a watt. So in terms of that perspective, do you have a view on it from an Indian point of view?
Jyoti (19:16) So really, because of economy of scale, even though significant amount of ramped up is happening in Indian market, Indian manufacturers and lot of new manufacturers coming up as well, but economy of scale still not comparable if you really compare with China. So if we, what we see this recent prices in the European market, less than 10 cents, that
Obviously that is large proportion of is due to over supply and to to face that price pressure. I think Indian manufacture is still a little bit behind. So there’s a lot of a lot of catch up to do.
Vikram (20:00) Are there duties protecting the local market in the
Jyoti (20:02) So there are some duties which and Indian market is very complex market depending on what type of project you’re talking about. You’re talking about government tender, yes, then those are protected with some sort of ⁓ taxation and still because Indian market has significant volume to deploy but also there are international market where Indian manufacturers are supplying their product to.
But yes, in my point of view, those tax sessions are one way of safeguarding local manufacturing. But I guess a holistic view would be needed in terms of providing some sort of support, some sort of financial support perhaps to local manufacturer to be more cost competitive rather than just putting some level of anti-damping tariff, et cetera. We have seen that was quite disturbing in the European market in the past.
getting the project deployed.
Vikram (21:04) Absolutely and then we change topics slightly you know one of things that I think about is you Bluefield are one of the big funds they listed on the FTSE 250 stock exchange like with foresight you know next could be the other big funds what persuaded you to leave the big fund and set up your own business?
Jyoti (21:27) It’s a quite interesting question because that is to live of my dream to be an entrepreneur. That’s one thing. ⁓ like I said earlier, when, and that was 2017 when feed-in tariff and rock was ⁓ coming to an end and what would happen next? was, that was thought process was going in my mind. And those algorithms that
I developed during my academic time, I thought could have some commercial value. So it was a quite tough decision, quite challenging decision to leaving a healthy job behind and doing something what it started Green Enco with. But if I look back now, was that a right decision? ⁓ Definitely yes. Obviously, level of challenges are different these days. again, challenges would always be there in the market.
Vikram (22:09) .
Right, so now Green Enco is a technical advisor. You mentioned you’ve performed over 11 gigawatts of services in 15 countries in Europe and Asia. In terms of your company structure, your team dynamics, do you have a team in the UK and in India?
Jyoti (22:41) So yeah, so we originally obviously started here and then it’s just last year we opened our ⁓ India office. And the reason being we opened this purely from a strategic reason because if we see different market research, renewable energy deployment, Asian market is one of the key markets globally speaking. And some key markets in Asia or Southeast Asian market is Vietnam.
Thailand, India, and not being physically present in those markets. This is different dynamics. You got to be there in person. So that is why we opened this office in India, which will not only just cover ⁓ Indian market, but also other Southeast Asian markets. ⁓ So we have two teams now, one team here in the UK and another team in India. And these two teams really working in tandem. And whether…
project that we are delivering here in Europe. ⁓ Team in India, they are also involved in those projects. But also project that we are doing in Asian market. Team here, they also involved in those Asian market. And I think one of the advantage we have, because working into two different time zones, it’s just offering extended delivery time or longer hours to work and adding value to our partners.
Vikram (24:03) Fantastic, so if someone needs to ramp up advisory services, you can do that pretty quickly.
Jyoti (24:09) Absolutely. And with the growing demand that what we see for our services here in Europe, also in Asian market, yes, we are growing in terms of headcount, in terms of obviously, different other KPIs in the business. So yes, it is quite interesting space where we are at at the moment.
Vikram (24:29) And in terms of challenges in adaptability, of course we had Brexit, then we had COVID, then we’ve had, you know, the Ukraine energy crisis. What have been your biggest challenges and how did you adapt?
Jyoti (24:44) I’ll take one common challenge, as I guess many people will take a reference of is COVID. When that started, ⁓ the first few months when lockdown happened, almost I was thinking to going back to job and because nothing was happening. And then what we have done very quickly, we changed so many things within our company structure, within our service verticals, et cetera. So what was happening? Obviously a pensioner about the Green Enco started to do this asset optimization of an operational asset.
But again, that market was not fully ready at that point of time. So market acceptance is also a challenge that we face, but then COVID hit it. What was happening back then is more of desktop work, development work. And that was the time our engineering design services started. we also, because at that point of time we’re doing projects into different other markets, so we managed to do projects into different areas differently.
but also added different service vertical. In fact, engineering services, which is one of our key service vertical today,
started because of challenges that we faced during COVID time.
Vikram (25:54) Absolutely. And if you go back 20 years, know, not many people would choose solar for financial reasons only, of course, you know, as I said in a previous podcast, know, the money makes the world go around. This is how our world works. But, you know, there are other sectors which is easier to be financially successful. You you go into solar because lots of people want to make a difference in this industry. You express your desire and making a difference. How do you
integrate this philosophy into your professional endeavors, particularly in the renewable energy sector.
Jyoti (26:27) I mean, like you said, it’s not just economics because economics will not actually help to drive for long period of time. So I mentioned about my very first job when I left that within three months, passion. So really passion is quite important and we always cultivate within our team, me, myself, values that we really follow. ⁓ It’s passion, obviously, innovation, ownership and trust.
and partnership. And I mentioned about earlier that ⁓ partner, we work with partners, we’d never say they’re client or customer because relationship management in this ever dynamic landscape where we are is absolutely essential. In terms of really a philosophy that we follow, ⁓ after being in this solar field for last 18 years and
Seeing so many natural disasters, whether you call it fire in Australia, in Spain, drought in Africa or flood in the UK, it’s heartbreaking seeing people and animals, whole society, livelihood are suffering. So I strongly believe 100 % renewable is possible. Obviously, intermittency is a challenge.
round the clock supply and that is where energy storage comes into picture. And if we see energy storage is expensive today, yes it is expensive today, I would say we need to look back 10 years solar and wind cost prices and how they gone down. I have no doubt that the cost for energy storage will go down much faster than are projected. One thing has happened in the past.
cost projection for solar or wind in the past, everything was wrong. Yeah. And wrong for the right way, meaning we always overachieved. So those challenges that we see are achievable. And ⁓ if we really see the cost of electricity from solar today, one of the cheapest form of electricity, purely from economics point of view as well, no brainer that solar will drive, solar or wind will drive this particular energy.
Vikram (28:41) Mm-hmm.
Jyoti (28:48) landscape towards net zero.
Vikram (28:50) But what is your view on the big issue with grid connections? know, people are getting grid connection dates of 15 years into the future.
Jyoti (28:59) This is one of the biggest challenges. We are sitting on 30 plus gigawatt of development project ready to be built, whether solar or energy storage projects. So grid is one of the biggest challenge perhaps at the moment. What is missing in my point of view is a holistic approach. Overall, ⁓ energy policy is missing in terms of how do we
transit to net zero. And I think when net ⁓ zero target set up, was underestimated the complexity of it. And the speed that we are going through to address those challenges, still not there. We are far away from this. So grid challenges, grid connection challenges is one of the biggest challenges.
A short term in my point of view would be energy storage solutions because if we still see obviously there’s a significant amount of development happening from energy storage point of view. But if I see really from energy storage perspective, we’re still scratching the surface. If we see some of those great challenges, whether they are capacity challenge or thermal challenges or other challenges, battery storage has solution to address those challenges. How do you really put those bricks all together so that
different stakeholders are integrated. I think this is where the big ⁓ missing link that I see.
Vikram (30:26) And some of the things people have raised in the past is you go to a big industrial factory and they’ve got issues with grid, with energy, input limits, and battery storage and solar would be perfect for them. And people are knocking on their doors and offering consultancy for free, whereas on the large scale side, people are charging 200,000 per megawatt for a fully developed solar project without even picking up a shovel just to study.
grid connection and the land agreements are going for that. What is your view in terms of solving an energy crisis for heavy industry? What should be the way forward in engaging with large corporates, for example?
Jyoti (31:08) There’s a significant amount of commercial industrial solar energy storage project as we speak are happening and we are involved. This is our day to day job working as a technical advisor for commercial industrial behind the meter projects. And this is strong economics there, particularly with energy price are quite high at the moment. So project economics are very healthy.
So yes, are a lot of developments are happening, a of executions projects are happening as we speak because grid connection would be relatively less challenging for commercial industrial applications because they already have their load, they already have their facilities in terms of ⁓ grid infrastructure point of view, whether they’re connecting, depending on the size of the project really, whether a few hundred kilowatt connecting to a low voltage network of their facility or megawatt scale system going into their internal high voltage system.
⁓ Commercial industrial application of solar energy storage is happening at a relatively faster speed for last one and a half years since energy price has gone up.
Vikram (32:16) Fantastic. if potential partners want to engage with you so far, we didn’t talk so much about Green Enco. We know that you’re active internationally. We know you have a lot of experience. We know you’re a technical advisor, but dig into specifics. You know, how should potential partners engage with Green Enco? What sort of things do you focus on as a starting point in a relationship?
Jyoti (32:39) So it covers across the whole project lifecycle. So we have different service verticals that we ⁓ engage with. We work with ⁓ developers at an early stage, whether someone needs an early stage assessment or feasibility assessment, going through development phase. Development means, in my point of view, twofold, planning and grid. So whether going through different grid application process, whether for G99,
distribution connection or quite significant amount of national grid ⁓ transmission line connections are happening. So we manage those processes and there are a lot of planning designs are needed. That’s what we do work with developers. But there’s a one interesting point ⁓ has taken huge amount of traction in the subsidy free landscape is optimization of a design even before submitting a planning application.
These are the areas that we work with developers and quite large number of developers that we work with providing these different services. And then very traditional owners engineering, technically diligent services that we do, whether managing RFPs for EPC or validation of EPC design and construction audit, QC, QA, quality control, quality assurance measure, going through a full pack, IAC and fact process for operational sites. And then… ⁓
this PVAPM, we call it PVAPM, PV Asset Performance Management, the asset optimization piece that I mentioned earlier, is working with fund, working with IPPs and ⁓ different fund managers or asset owners. ⁓ So this is a whole full cycle of exercise we do. And in last two years, what is happening because of the age of those existing asset, their
lot of repowering or revamping exercises are happening, which is even more challenging in my point of view, because there are a lot of existing technical compliances, commercial compliances to be be to be maintained.
Vikram (34:41) And of course, with repowering, big topic is the inverters, because a lot of them are designed for 10-year life cycles, or they fail earlier, or they’re just coming to the natural end of life. you know, in solar, we never have stability for more than a couple of years. know, suddenly, we’ve had Huawei almost disappear from the UK market. What has been your experience?
Jyoti (35:05) So when it comes to repowering, ⁓ it comes with a character, whether you’re talking about repowering of a whole system, which ⁓ I haven’t actually seen that is happening, is more of revamping which is happening. And within this, whether you change module or change inverter or change transformer, combination of all three rarely happening. Most of the time, like you said, inverter replacement is happening.
whether you’re changing existing central inverter to string inverter these days, which is a high power string inverter, ⁓ lot of challenges to, electrical challenges to overcome, lot of, and those projects are either connected with under feed-in tariff or ROC projects. So there are TIC, total install capacity and DMC, declare net capacity. Those has to be ⁓ maintained. Otherwise existing ROC or feed-in tariff might be compromised. There are a lot of, ⁓
different things need to check when selecting a new product to retrofit or revamp to an existing system. But you mentioned about Huawei, but they are available now. They are coming back in the market. ⁓ So yes, there are a options available from high power string inverter. They are available these days.
Vikram (36:23) Right, in the early days they had what, 28 kilowatt or 33 or 36 KTL inverters and now if you had to replace those because either you’re changing modules or the inverters are coming to end of life, you know, how do you achieve that without going over your export list?
Jyoti (36:39) Now quite interesting, not just on the export limit point as well. I all the systems, the 1000 volt system. Yes. And these days inverters are, most of them 1500 volt. So manufacturing industry, whether module or inverter, they have realized that particular demand and they are producing some product just for repowering, which would be a 1000 volt inverter, ⁓ newly available these days, can match with the existing.
Vikram (36:58) Right.
Jyoti (37:08) existing system design. Yes, there’s a lot of ⁓ puzzle to really play with so that you can make a perfect match. Now, 100 % perfect match is very difficult to achieve. So how close you can go, that’s where think the beauty is.
Vikram (37:20) Do have a view on inverter clipping? Because even now if you replace the modules because they’ve blown off in the wind or have any other issues, warranty claim or or theft could be an issue as well. So if you replace your current module with higher power modules and replace an inverter with a higher powered inverter, what do you see as the perfect?
base it dc ac ratio and and in terms of inverted clipping juju face that challenge at all
Jyoti (37:51) So yeah, DC-AC ratio, one needs to really model that throughout the year based on different design parameters. Now, for a retrofit project or a revamping project or repowering project, there’s less chance of play with mounting structure. So either the mechanical dimension ⁓ of those products are ⁓ fixed basically for the mounting structure.
point of view, but also the inter-door spacing. can’t really play with too much because there is existing infrastructure. So if you like, you have a limited boundary conditions here to play with compared to a new design. So DC to AC ratio remain somewhere in the range of 1.3 to 1.4, sort of in that range, which is not very dissimilar to what we have seen in the past, which was about 1.2, 1.25.
So DC-AC ratio is not the biggest challenge, but like I said, wanting to really see it purely from annual clipping point of view. when you mentioned about high power module, now if you’re changing all days, let’s say 300 watt-peak module, 310 watt-peak module with 540 watt-peak module, it’s not the electrical challenge because you can change inverter and you can make an electrical match with.
string configuration etc. But the biggest challenge here is the dimension of those modules are not fitting with the existing mounting structure. Even at a granular level like what is the thickness of the frame that has been used because the clamp would be different if you use different type of ⁓ module. But the advantage we have like I said earlier different module manufacturer have identified this is an opportunity. They are producing certain modules which is not very dissimilar
from mechanical dimension point of view, they can fit with the existing structure, may not have different thickness, same thickness as the frame of the module as in the past, but some level of metal frame can adjust those problems. ⁓ But overall dimension could be similar. So I see ⁓ less electrical challenge, more could be a mechanical challenge, because if you wanted to do whole remamping work,
then cost of revamping would be significantly higher because when you talk about revamping, it’s not just the technical gain, it’s more of a techno commercial viability because even though system may not be performing, some module may not be performing to its optimum level, question is how much your new system will cost and where is the breakthrough? So one really need to see not just with complexity of this integration from electrical, mechanical, compliance, et cetera point of view, but also
cost-weighted analysis.
Vikram (40:42) How do you see in terms of cash flows? Because in the past I was always told there’s a cash flow issue in O and asset management because most of the money is spent in EBC and now the asset has to return ⁓ an investment back to the shareholders. But now that the energy prices have gone so so high, does this create a windfall in terms of cash flows to fund more repowering or revamping?
Jyoti (41:07) One of the reasons perhaps in my point of view why those revamping, repowering is happening these days because they are six, seven years old and perhaps ⁓ project return has already achieved. And by injecting a little bit of operational capex in those projects, ⁓ uplift of generation can result into better return. So, gas flow in my point of view would be healthy one going forward with this.
Vikram (41:35) Fantastic. And your current projects, do you have any details you can share with your listeners?
Jyoti (41:42) That is really whether commercial industrial due diligence, owner’s engineering project from few hundred kilowatt to multi-megawatt ground mounted system, ⁓ whether in the UK or in other part in Europe, whether in Romania, in Ireland and in Germany, different areas that we are currently working on. And we mainly work with fund ⁓ investors.
IPPs, developers, and ⁓ asset optimization piece is really taking a huge traction because of injecting a little bit of CAPEX, a significant amount of uplift happen. So if we see the cost of deploying this optimization is significantly less compared to uplift that we see could gain from additional revenue, from additional generation.
Vikram (42:37) Fantastic. And you said 2024 is looking promising. ⁓ What is your feeling and your forecast about this year?
Jyoti (42:44) Two ways. mean, from market perspective, I am very, very optimistic because if we look back when we started, if I really look back, back in 2006 when I moved into solar, ⁓ one common question I used to face, solar in the UK, you must be joking. And now we are sitting on over perhaps 15 gigawatt of operational asset with 30 plus gigawatt of development asset.
So future is promising from market perspective. Of course, there are some challenges, great challenges and other development challenges out there. But what we have seen really, industry is relatively smarter to find the way out with a weather level of innovation in product, weather level of innovation in technologies or level of innovation in financial model or business model, et cetera. So I’m very optimistic in terms of growth potential that we would expect to see. if we call it UK market had
a golden era, I think, Vietnam era yet to come. So that’s purely from a market perspective. And just to reflect that market scenario, for us at Green Enco, we are very optimistic in terms of starting this year. Today is just one of the early days of 2024. And in terms of our project volume, project pipeline that is looking like that to be delivered, very healthy. So we are very, very optimistic from a Green Enco perspective as well.
Vikram (44:06) Fantastic and in terms of you know you’ve been in the industry for almost two decades now in terms of personal and professional growth how have you personally and professionally evolved throughout your career in this sector and what advice do you give to your aspiring young people who want to make a positive impact in this field?
Jyoti (44:26) Yeah, like I said, when I started into solar in the UK, there was no market was there. Then we developed that market as some of the stakeholders in the market. So ⁓ with this current level of development pipeline that we have and what we need in terms of our net zero transition, so there is no brainer that solar will drive the landscape. And what we have seen in the past that how much
job it will create. I’m very optimistic again, seeing the history and how we have transited from no solar to solar and then overcoming these current challenges. And being one of the cheapest source of electricity from solar, ⁓ market is very promising. And a true direct reflection of that promising market is to businesses like us. ⁓
Any new candidate who is seeing their career path into renewable job creation obviously would significantly ⁓ link with this market opportunities and one of the one of the challenges that we are seeing in the market and of course you mentioned about great challenges but also skill level that is another biggest challenge in the market to deliver this so in terms of potential for job, it’s significantly greater and and
where we’re actually listening to these who wanted to pursue their career in renewable, they have a very, very, very bright future. Just us, we are looking into recruiting more people in 2024. And I’m sure other companies are doing similar because, again, like I said, the market landscape is too big. The size of cake is really, really big. And even though if you get a small piece of cake, that small piece of cake with the wider perspective is still a bigger one for you.
Vikram (46:20) Absolutely, energy is the largest industry in the world, geopolitics in a tremendous way, especially with what’s going on in Ukraine and it could change even more with the issues in the Red Sea with Israel and Palestine and so on. So in terms of why we got into this industry was to make a difference and sometimes, unfortunately, we do see some unethical practices, but for you,
Jyoti (46:22) Yeah, exactly.
Vikram (46:46) balancing ethics with ambition, you know, especially during development, you know, I hear stories where developers don’t really need to care what happens with the final project as long as they get the project over the line and, you know, get their projects sold. They don’t need to care if it’s actually buildable or not. For you, how do you make sure that you’re not compromising on ethics and against ambition?
Jyoti (47:07) I mean, very simply, really no compromise on ethics when you build up your ambitious growth plan. ⁓ Because otherwise, what we would compromise is the sustainability of the industry. ⁓ Having said that, mean, obviously post-COVID and post-fitting tariff, ⁓ there are a lot of new build projects. They are under execution phase and we are doing a lot of construction audit. ⁓
It is still frustrating to see some level of good practices has not been followed. In another word, lesson has not been learned. So we do see a lot of bad practices are still in place, whether into development phase or in the execution phase. We as industry stakeholder must address this because otherwise we do not want to repeat the same mistake what we have done in the past in terms of really, like you said, whether when project
is in development, whether they are buildable or I want to develop a project but I know that I will take an exit at COD or even at RTB. building a good project is not my problem. So that level of viewpoint must be removed from the equation.
Vikram (48:23) I’m saying more specifically, you know, it’s fantastic that there’s over 30 gigawatts of projects in planning, probably even more that have not been submitted just yet. I’ve read some news articles which suggested the national grid may come down on this where they may give people a time limit on grid connections to free up the queue of planning applications because there is an issue where people are getting grid connection days 10, 15 years into the future. Do you have any personal experience on this? Are they?
applications which are not really viable that are tying up the grid capacity.
Jyoti (48:57) There are quite a lot of obviously the mixed back what we see while working with different developers. Some early stage development, are getting through some connection data, but some are really waiting for 10, 15 years. ⁓ what we have seen in the market, the national grid was doing some road shows, collecting different feedbacks from the stakeholders in the markets across the country. And I know that they are working on
preparing exactly what you said that how this grid connection bottleneck can be released, relaxed. So that level of working is happening. So we need to see that what would be the outcome, what is the outcome coming out of that and how holistically that has been taken. But in terms of recognition point of view, I think that has been recognized. Question is how holistically that has been ⁓ assessed.
Vikram (49:50) fantastic and there’s now a big talk about NSIP projects and national significant infrastructure projects. We’re talking about 500 megawatt projects with Longfield, there’s one in construction, 373 megawatt peak with Cleve Hill in Kent. There’s others now, 600 megawatts, even one gigawatt projects. For me, it’s hard to pinch myself and accept this as being a reality. We’re looking at small nuclear power station level of projects now.
What is your personal view on national significant infrastructure projects? Do you see them being a trend and being built in the next 10 years?
Jyoti (50:24) In next 10 years, perhaps yes, but in next four to five years, I have a big question mark on that because it comes with obviously different challenges in terms of development perspective and different landlord, legal procedure, et cetera, et cetera. Those are the longer time taking process for those big infrastructure projects.
There will be some. And like you said, there are few in different stages of execution planning and early stage planning. But I still see large proportion of future development will be going in sort of like 49.9 megawatt scheme.
Vikram (51:12) Absolutely, which is why Cleve Hill and Longfield are so unique. They’ve got shovels in the ground now and I’m personally very excited just to be a fly on the wall to see from Shortwick, 72 megawatts, Lanwerth, 75, to go 373 megawatts with Cleve Hill. And then at the same time we’ve got a potato farm with Longfield, 400 megawatts of solar, 100 megawatts of battery starting.
You know, so for me it’s really hard to believe and if it does happen, know, I was a fantastic, you know, of course I would take care not to interfere with the food supply and so on, but at the same time, you know, more space is taken up by golf clubs.
Jyoti (51:51) yeah, very true. mean, that’s going back to a ⁓ debate of ⁓ available land or utilization of land for solar. ⁓ They’re certainly not taking agricultural land. ⁓ And like you said, there are more golf clubs than solar fields.
Vikram (52:07) Absolutely. And, know, in the early podcast, we interviewed actual farmers, know, Matthew and Clive and Guy, these guys are all coming from farming and I asked them straightforward, you know, why did you get into solar and why was farming not attractive? And the simple answer was economics, pure economics. These farms are going bankrupt, you know, because they’re not viable anymore. And solar is actually helping them to keep a commercial.
business case to carry on farming but also to farm energy.
Jyoti (52:39) And how can we ignore the impact of global warming, climate change? I think we should be actually calling it climate emergency. What is the cost for safeguarding those events that are becoming more frequent these days?
Vikram (52:55) Absolutely. But in terms of specifics of the technology, know, do you have a view on on energy storage projects? Do you get involved with battery storage yourself?
Jyoti (53:05) Yeah, so all this, whether design or optimization point of view, it was not just solar, solar and battery storage, whether just standard on solar or standard on battery or co-located. So yes, combination of both.
Vikram (53:18) And it’ll come into the public domain soon that there’s a catastrophic level of transformer failure in battery storage. ⁓ We still don’t really understand the reasons why. And if some of these asset owners want to work with you to look at the root causes, do you have any experience yourself with respect to this?
Jyoti (53:38) So there are obviously fire safety is one of the biggest challenges that for any battery project are considering. And that is where it’s still a revolving ⁓ landscape from designing a battery. Obviously there is a fire safety national guidelines are available and then what level of safety measures different manufacturers are offering and how designer designing the system with some level of fire protection system in place. So there’s a ⁓ of moving parts in here.
But yes, ⁓ thermal challenge is one of the biggest challenges for solar. But again, I’m very optimistic in terms of solutions that are available, but how we are identifying those problems. I think the main problem of a problem is not identifying that problem to its granular level. As soon as that problem is identified, recognized, solutions are available. Obviously, they would come at a cost. But again, if we do not cut any corner,
Vikram (54:25) Thank
Jyoti (54:35) where at the development phase or at the execution phase, those catastrophic scenarios will not happen.
Vikram (54:42) This is our discussion about planning design being appropriate because unfortunately a lot of good contractors went bankrupt because they guaranteed certain transformer availability and then those transformers were failing and often a lot of installers are putting the name down as an EPC but they’re free issued with a specific spec of transformers or PCS or inverter stations or batteries.
and have no control over the equipment but they’re taking the EPC liability on connecting.
Jyoti (55:15) And that is why D-deligence, owner’s engineering, is essential. Whether that product is free, should buy the fund to a contractor because they’re not necessarily playing full EPC turnkey because they’re just connecting them together with the free component. So D-deligence from selection of material to design to construction phase.
it’s absolutely essential to safeguard this problem. So we do get involved at development stage and taking care of all those design parameter to safeguard those fire safety protection systems in the design phase going into planning. So taking those measures from very early stage of development, meaning before submitting a planning application, it’s key.
Vikram (56:01) Absolutely and to protect client confidentiality I won’t mention any specific names but there are you know lots of question marks because you can also see why from a development point of view you invest so much money you put in so many planning applications you pay for all the studies and you’re focused on getting your cash back which is you find a funder a funder comes in pays a lot of money for a project they take the project on they subcontract to an EPC probably starts construction and everything is in a sort of mess.
And then that asset owner has to now pick up the ball and somehow put a plan in place to own this site for the next potentially 40 years. So when they try to develop their asset management and O strategy, what sort of advice would you give to these asset owners? know, what should they come to you for and what sort of things should they be thinking about to put an effective asset management strategy in place?
Jyoti (56:55) So early stage involvement from a fund who would have long term asset ownership strategy in their plan would be ideal case scenario because they would have visibility in terms of how they will manage their asset and design and implement selection of component etc. would then be decided accordingly. And that would then help in terms of allocating budget for O allocating budget for asset management.
⁓ to maintain those assets for the ⁓ sustainability of the life of the project. So, our list of involvement of those long-term asset owners are essential, but yes, we do have lot of developers. are short-term investors, if you like, and this is where the diligence would be very essential to make sure that the asset that they are buying address those points a long-term asset owner would like to see. ⁓
And I believe also OEM manufacturers also need to be part of the equation. ⁓ What are the guidelines which they are following, but how closely they are following, they need to be probably ⁓ strongly integrated. So it’s more of an integrated approach is needed.
Vikram (58:08) And do you get involved with some of the jargonistic terms like FAC and PAC? What’s FAC I asked on before? It’s Final Acceptance Certification.
Jyoti (58:17) That’s right. so it’s back performance acceptance certificate when plant goes over the COD, grid connection stage, commercial operation date. So that back start, let’s say from end of the execution phase or connection to the grid. And then depending on the contract, EPC contract, IAC usually happen after one year. So intermediate acceptance certificate or test.
certain level of diligence, visit, etc. and in fact at the end of the contractual period, whether two years or five years period, final acceptance certificate.
Vikram (58:59) And do you get involved in preparing the audit statements for…
Jyoti (59:02) We do, we do as we speak. Next week we’ll be going actually to do an IAC ⁓ audit of a site. So there are different protocols, there are different procedures to follow and that should in line with the contract that is already in place and site audit some level of testing, inspection, etc. Making sure that the intermediate stage has been carried on properly and then when it comes to final acceptance test, similar approach.
protocol guidelines, ⁓ test template, etc. There are different protocols to follow. Yes, we do get involved very regularly with this activity.
Vikram (59:40) Fantastic Jyothi and as we come towards the end of our discussion, I’ve certainly enjoyed this chat and I will be listening back and thinking very carefully about some of the things you said and I’m sure they’ll be follow up questions. But for now as a call to action to your listeners, you know, what would be your advice to them?
Jyoti (59:59) 100 % renewable is possible at an economical level. And market is promising whether from deployment point of view of renewable to get to net zero and also from jobs perspective, anyone trying to pursue their career into this sector, market is promising and that will reflect from business point of view, that will reflect from job creation point of view and ultimately achieving net zero target.
Vikram (1:00:28) And one of the objections are which is, know, in the winter we hardly have any sun and of course in the summer we have many hours of daylight and so that looks very attractive. But what is your answer for the winter time? How do you go to 100 % renew?
Jyoti (1:00:43) So that is why 100 % renewable, I didn’t actually mention about 100 % solar. 100 % renewable. So that will integrate solar, wind and other form of renewable integrated with energy storage because one thing we cannot compromise is not keeping lights on. And that is possible. We have seen in different markets, different scenarios. So one thing to integrate, there’s a very good marriage between wind and solar.
Vikram (1:01:01) You
Jyoti (1:01:12) purely from seasonal point of view, also from day and night point of view. during daytime, obviously, solar is available and during nighttime, wind is more. If you look at summer and winter pattern, it’s actually opposite. So during summer, obviously, a high proportion of sunlight is coming. During winter, actually, it’s wind. So it’s a very good marriage. And during my past life, during…
my time at UV, we integrated a couple of solar and wind projects. And this is another advantage, also integrate with sharing common grid. So there is a project economics there. Around the clock supply is possible, integrated with battery. So when I say 100 % renewable, it’s integrating all the sources of renewable.
Vikram (1:02:01) And capacity factors, do they play a role? When you combine wind and solar with batteries, do you see an uplift in capacity factor?
Jyoti (1:02:08) It will certainly ⁓ increase because ⁓ then you have ⁓ storage which has a source of electricity available for the time when ⁓ generation is not available. ⁓ So yes, capacity factor for each of these different technologies integrated with battery will definitely will go up.
Vikram (1:02:29) Fantastic, Jyothi, I’ve certainly enjoyed this conversation and thanks so much for joining us.
Jyoti (1:02:33) Thank you for having me. Lovely. Thank you very much. Great.
Vikram (00:01) Welcome to our fifth installment of this feature of Solar Photovoltaics podcast. I’m Vikram from Ventus Caymans Connectivity. Today we have the absolute pleasure of hosting Mr. Claren. Arnold, welcome.
Arnoud (00:14) Hi Vigrum, thanks. Thanks, thank you for having me at this podcast.
Vikram (00:19) Fantastic. We first met in the Shard in 2016 during the controversial Brexit referendum, but also towards the end of the first major large-scale solar construction boom in the UK. We always had an intense ambience to our conversations, not only because of the height of your office in the Shard or the triple glazing blocking all phone signals, but also due to the sheer speed at which Foresight were acquiring solar farms in the UK and
your meticulous attention to details such as DC string cables and connectors was putting us in touch. ⁓ honored, are you able to tell us a bit more about your background, about what you do now, know, who you are, before we get into the specific questions?
Arnoud (01:02) Sure, of course. ⁓ Well, okay. Well, I mean, first of all, again, it’s a real pleasure to be here. And I’ve been listening to some of the previous episodes, which were really interesting to listen to and to just hear about ⁓ other professionals in the solar sector and how they experienced the solar boom and the period since then. ⁓ About myself, so I am Dutch. I studied electrical engineering in the Netherlands and ⁓
And well, guess, you know, when we talk about solar or renewables, maybe specifically, ⁓ you know, that actually started in a certain way already back then. When I was studying, ⁓ we all had to do a practical assignment at the university where I studied. You know, they were encouraging students to do that abroad. ⁓
You know, of course I could have chosen, you know, Germany or England or the U S but those countries felt like places where it wouldn’t be too hard to end up, ⁓ you know, later in life. I looked for an opportunity that was something, you know, special, something that’s not so easy to do later on. And it turned out that it was also possible to do the assignment in Kathmandu, Nepal. Wow. Yeah. And
Now, I must admit, I’ll tell you a little bit later what it was about. It was about, in a way, it was connected to renewables. That was not, at that moment, the reason to do it. It was just the whole adventure of going there. But the company where I was going to be the next five months was a local company that was doing micro hydro generators to be installed in the Himalayas to give small communities electricity.
And they needed a controller to be designed because otherwise if you don’t have that the voltage and frequency will vary ⁓ depending on the amount of water that goes through the turbine or the use or the consumption by the village. So I’m mentioning this because this was actually my first exposure.
renewables but also because I learned a very valuable lesson there. ⁓ previous to me there was a student who had already built the first version of the controller and how this works was surprising to me and to most people which is the following the amount of water that goes into the generator is generally the same so it takes water from the river flowing down the mountains goes through a pipe through a nozzle and then it hits a belt and wheel
that makes turbine spin. Now that’s always pretty much the same amount of water. So that doesn’t change much, but the people who use the electricity, they may be asleep, they may be awake, they may be using the lights or heating. So the consumption varies all the time. And that made, if you wouldn’t have a controller or something that controls the system, that would then ⁓ raise and lower the voltage, which would of course damage the equipment connected to it.
Of course, you can think of many ways to deal with that, very sophisticated ways. But the way how it was done was that they would typically build like a pool, like a swimming pool next to the generator. And then they would put dozens or hundreds of heating elements in there. So the typical spiral heating elements that you could use to heat up, you know, water in a cup if you wanted to. That’s very popular in a ball to use and very easy to obtain.
So they wouldn’t put those in there and then the controller, all it would do is it would keep the consumption the same. So if the village would be using a lot of electricity, it wouldn’t direct much power to the heaters. But in the other way around, if they would use, for example, a lot of, or if they wouldn’t use any electricity, then those elements would heat up and it would just heat up the water. Now people ask me, and what would you do with warm water? You do nothing with that. That’s not the idea. The idea is just.
that you balance it and that’s the cheapest way to do it. so then the question is, people ask me, that’s not very efficient, you you’re throwing away all that energy. And you know, that’s very interesting, right? Because that’s not of the requirements for those people. There is no loss of electricity because the water is flowing down the mountain, whether it goes through the turbine or not, it’s the same. But for the village, it’s very important that
They have an easy, cheap system, so low capex. It’s very easy to repair. They only need very easy, sourceable components. So low opex and efficiency has no importance at all in this case. sometimes when you design something, your design requirements may be different to what you first expect. So that’s always important to take into account. And I think that’s been an important lesson early on in the career that continues to be valuable.
Fritter on.
Vikram (06:19) So you have good experience of hydroelectricity or micro hydro, let’s say. There is a company in the UK called Dulles that’s been doing this since the 80s as well. that’s certainly very interesting. You spent quite a long time studying electrical engineering in the University of Twente in the Netherlands. What made you want to choose Nepal and micro hydro as your university project?
Arnoud (06:44) Yeah, well, I it really was. must admit it, the napalm part was more important than microhydrogeneration. It was just, you know, to go as far away as possible and the biggest adventure as possible. So that was really the reason. And that’s also the reason why it took a bit longer for me to study. I’ve been traveling quite a bit during my studies. I thought if I don’t do it now, will I have the opportunity to do it later? So,
So yeah, I wouldn’t call myself at all an expert on the hydro generation because this was the only thing I’ve done with it. And it was obviously in a very different ⁓ setting than you would do in a developed country or in UK or anywhere else. But it was a very good experience, nevertheless.
Vikram (07:28) Fantastic. then you somehow ended up in Spain or doing concentrated solar. You know, this isn’t the same as photovoltaics. This is concentrating mirrors and probably melting salt mines. know, are you able to share a bit more details about that experience?
Arnoud (07:44) Yeah, of course. Yeah, I did end up in Spain. That was, you know, because of love, because of a woman, which I think is often the reason for people to change a country. and I’ve never regretted it. I love living in Spain. I’m living there now. So, ⁓ so yeah, through a few steps, I am
I joined in Madrid a company that is a, it was called Sofocus. They were a startup company based in Silicon Valley. And this was when they started, it was about 2005, 2006, I joined in 2008. They had seen back at the time that there was a good business case to do solar in a different way than PV because back in the time,
you and everybody else will know, PV panels, silicon was all very expensive, many, many, many more times than it is now. And ⁓ that was just really stopping it from deploying its large scale. So of course there was concentrated solar power. That’s what you just referred to where you heat up in a way, water or liquids and run a turbine. And that’s where the salt, et cetera, comes from. But this is slightly different. This is CPV, so concentrated photovoltaics.
Vikram (09:05) Right, Not CSP, not the mirrors.
Arnoud (09:09) Exactly. Well, there are mirrors. I’ll explain it. So what they did is they created a panel which was about 15 centimeters deep. And that was enough to fit in ⁓ mirrors that were, if I can just explain it by comparing it to a car headlights.
So a car headlight, have the bulb in the middle and then the light is reflected onto one mirror in the front, goes back to a second mirror and then it goes out in a very straight beam. Now, if you use the same design in the other way around, then the sun is shining into this mirror system, onto a primary mirror and it shines back out onto a secondary mirror and then back in through a gap in the middle of the primary mirror onto a high ⁓ efficiency cell.
which at that time was a triple junction cell. let’s say it was the same kind of technology that they would use in space. That’s very expensive, but because you only need one square centimeter because the light is concentrated 500 times or 700 times onto that little bit, as long as you’re able to cool it and make it efficient, then that was giving a higher efficiency than normal PV panels at the time. But it had a drawback, of course. It had to be mounted onto a very precise two axis tracker.
And at the time that seems more or less logical. You may remember maybe in Spain in those times there was a very high feed-in tariff of 44 cents per kilowatt hour RPI linked. so, you know, at that time it made sense. It was cheaper to build software like that than with PV. And that was, you know, a great experience. I also learned something else there, which was that
you know, at some point, it did happen that unexpectedly, said we suddenly find I actually found in the fields, you know, that the mirrors were cracking. Now, this was the very first generation of the product. But of course, this was not supposed to And the design, the designers never thought it could happen because they had, you know, they had already obviously thought about the possibility and mitigated it as they thought. now, of course, they fixed it, it was a new
generation and eventually the company doesn’t exist anymore because it was overtaken by normal PV solar. But I think it was a very good lesson for me to realize how new technology comes with a risk of not having track records. So this was a good example of how something that has been engineered and very, very thoroughly is still new and still things can happen that nobody expected. This was the case here.
Vikram (11:57) Absolutely. I’m looking at your LinkedIn profile. I SoulFocus was January 2008 till October 2011. I personally got into PV because of the financial crisis. You know, I was in industrial sales and typical construction and all of those sectors were, you know, on their knees and PV and wind were the only booming areas that I could find during this period. Did you have any experience of the financial crisis itself? know, did that affect you in any way during your time at SoulFocus?
Arnoud (12:26) Yeah, absolutely. you know, when, when that’s so focused, the management was seeing how ⁓ PV prices were coming down. Now they kept adjusting their business model to cope with that. But eventually, also because I think in a crisis, people are more risk averse. So as I just mentioned, do a project in solar with a new technology or with proven technology, it became, you you could notice how
the market became a little bit more risk averse and then together with the fact that PV became cheaper and cheaper, it wasn’t looking very good. So I was looking to change jobs and I made it clear my LinkedIn profile and I looked around and things weren’t looking very good in Spain at all, be honest. And then I was contacted by Headhunter in the UK that made me aware
of this opportunity. should tell you, this is of course, when I moved to Forsyte. Now, Forsyte had an office in Spain back at the time. had just started about a year before there’s one person working there. And the idea was to strengthen that team, which I thought was very exciting, because I always enjoyed very much to join startup companies.
I had myself a startup company in earlier years as well. So that was the idea. But I proposed to them to move to London for half a year to really get to know the team and to get the experience and then go back to live in Spain and stay there. And they agreed to that. we moved over there. And during those six months, things were getting worse and worse with the crisis. And Spain was particularly hit.
⁓ you know, badly. And at some point, ⁓ the company decided, ⁓ to shut down the, ⁓ the Madrid office. which obviously then, didn’t allow me to, to go, to go to, to back to, ⁓ to, to, to Spain, for Forsythe. So we decided to stay. And that was fine because of course, as we now know, there was, ⁓ there was some big things, there were some big things happening, going to happen.
in the UK. Now when I was there, all we had at the time were a Spanish assets. ⁓ And we just bought a few months before I joined. ⁓ The first 5 megawatt feed project in Kent, Ilseford, Kent was possible and that was the first project I was exposed to. ⁓ So yeah, that’s how I ended up in the UK.
Vikram (15:05) Mm-hmm.
Arnoud (15:14) And from there on, course, that was the first site and I would be ⁓ involved with the next 63 acquisitions that Forsight made from there onwards ⁓ up to 2018.
Vikram (15:29) Of course. Before we go deeper into your UK experience, know, what were your, because I remember there was the Spanish embassy and all the Spanish companies were coming over and then they were quite upset about retroactive duties or something like this. Lots of people moved to the UK. I think the Spanish solar boom was one of the early ones together with the Netherlands and Germany. And then everyone seemed to then focus on the UK market. But in terms of context over the last decade or so, what were your memories of
of the cost of PV in terms of pens per watt of modules or construction ⁓ solar projects. know, now that we look at 2023, we’re looking at module pricing going below 10 cents a watt for solar panels themselves, but topcon solar panels and type potentially. If you look back at that period with sole focus and just before you shut down the Spain office with Forsyte and moved to the UK, do you have any recollections of what the pricing was then?
Arnoud (16:25) Yeah, think EPC, I think was around, it depends on the size of the plant, which are much smaller. So it would be more expensive per megawatt, it was like six, seven, eight euros per watt to install those smaller PV plants. that was obviously, that’s now more than 10 times less than that.
Mostly driven of course by the panels as you just mentioned, the cells in the panels, also panels apparently are now in a range of 15 to 20 cents. But also inverters of course have come down very significantly and structure as well. Structure maybe mostly because of the design. When feed-in tiers were still there and there was quite a lot of money.
you wouldn’t want to take risk. So you would take a strong structure and you would do things. If you look at the two access trackers, there were some beasts out there with a huge amount of material. also by redesigning, things were made cheaper. But there’s also another example that I can give you maybe based on experience, because we talk about EPC and we talk about supply chain. But also, for example, in the O range, people may not, maybe not everybody,
has a view or an idea of what kind of prices there were in O &M. For example, in Spain, when we still had that very high tariff, so 44 cents RPI linked for 25 years. And also, I must admit, it’s important to explain that often the EPC and O &M contract were negotiated together and the value was sometimes a little bit mixed, was my experience. So sometimes maybe to make the EPC more attractive.
they would maybe make the O &M more expensive than it needed to be. You could sometimes see that that was being put together in that way by the seller, whether it was accepted or not by the buyer. I’ll leave that in the middle. So what I have seen was a site which had a contract from very early days that was at a cost of 50,000.
euros per megawatt, RPI linked, and then there was also a yield-based bonus on top of that. So compare that to nowadays where maybe the range of an O &M would be roughly between 5 and 10k, which depends on the scope and the exclusions. So that’s pretty much also a factor 10. So we’re also focused on the panels.
But the sector has experienced a vast reduction across the various different parts of the sector, this case O as well.
Vikram (19:24) So 50,000, is this 50,000 euros per megawatt for O &M in this time? Yeah.
Arnoud (19:30) Yeah, that one’s existed.
Vikram (19:34) Yeah.
Arnoud (19:35) It’s crazy. ⁓
Vikram (19:37) It’s crazy how things have changed so much because now it seems to be a complete reduction in the budget allowed for O &M as the prices have naturally come down. then in 2011 is then as you said the big one where you move to London with Foresight. What were your first early impressions when you moved to the UK?
Arnoud (20:01) Well, should correct you there. I didn’t actually move to London because when I joined Forsyte, it was a much more modest company than we know now. In fact, a lot of people in the solar sector obviously didn’t know Forsyte because they hadn’t really entered the sector yet. I was number 40 employee-wise and we were based in Seven Oaks, so just south of London.
I remember that while they were growing, one of the difficulties was to attract people because people were normally used to commute into London, not out of London into Sevenoaks. So it was a very nice company to join. I enjoyed it a lot. I first looked to live in London and…
I made a common mistake that many foreigners make when they come to London, when we asked for what the rent pricing was. And this is already a long time ago, so imagine now. They said, it’s this amount, right? And we thought, well, that’s actually more or less what we have budgeted for. So, hey, that’s great. We can have some very nice places in London. And then it turned out that in London, for some reason, the prices are expressed in
weekly prices, not monthly prices. So it became times four. So about the next very next day, we were taking the train to Sevenoaks to see what kind of nice places we could rent there. And we were able to rent a very nice place. Of course, we didn’t so much. And, you know, we’re not able to enjoy so much the real London experience. But when Forst had moved to London, we moved to Brighton for another few years.
⁓ The commute was a bit longer, but it was okay. And Brighton is a very exciting place to be as well. I guess moving to England was a really interesting experience. Of course, first we thought we were going to be there six months and then it much longer. that didn’t matter. mean, we’ve done so much. We’ve really tried to enjoy it as much as possible. And it’s true that Save Seven Oaks maybe after a few years becomes a little bit local.
So we solved that by moving to Brighton, which is a lovely city where we also had a great time.
Vikram (22:31) One of the unique things about you were that you were already in foresight from October 2011, had background in the PV business. I started full-time with PV in March 2012, so it was refreshing to see that you with the background in electrical engineering, working for an investor, actually taking an interest in the deep technical ⁓ issues because quality is a big thing in PV. I have notes saying that you
you started to focus more on the fact process. What does fact stand for? What is it exactly?
Arnoud (23:06) Yeah, so that’s the final acceptance certificate or final acceptance test. ⁓ Yeah, so that’s a very interesting subject ⁓ that you are raising now. you’re right. When I joined, you know, it was difficult at that time to find people with solar experience in the UK. And that may very well have been the reason why ⁓
the recruiter reached out to me while I was actually living in Spain. ⁓ Things have changed so much. you just remind ourselves that Solar in the beginning, the way how funds worked was that they were risk averse and they felt that the best way to deal with Solar was to only actually purchase the site at PEC. So PEC is the Provisional Acceptance
test or certificates, which is something that you do right after the site is connected to see if it’s working properly. And then there is a two year period during normally, sometimes there are tests halfway after one year, which the intermediate acceptance test, and then there was the final acceptance test. Now I’ll explain a little bit more about that. The idea was that, okay, if we get to the dead points, we’re not taking any construction risk. can see that the asset is working.
And you still have another two years to see if it’s working. So surely that will then, you know, be a good guarantee that the asset will last for 25 years, because keep in mind that from a fund perspective, from a manager’s perspective, you know, there are, you know, no technical people. In Forsythe, there were technical people because they weren’t already working with other assets like biomass and things like that. But generally, of course, these are all financial people. So they look at an asset and they just need to know
what will we spend on the asset and what will it generate? Now generation, of course, you know why solar is so popular, especially when there was a feed-in tariff. Because the solar source, the solar radiation, it may change from one day to the other, but from one year to the other, it is nearly identical from year to year. And with the subsidy, it is identical as well. so if your availability is pretty good, the idea was that solar solar plants would run.
basically themselves. So the three factors that could influence the final yield or the final investment, the money that they generate, they were all really, really stable. that of course was the reason why finance, the finance industry really liked solar assets.
they had in mind that they would spend a certain amount of money on an O &M contract, a certain amount of money on the MRA, the maintenance reserve accounts, and then they would know what they would get for that. now turn out of course, that it isn’t exactly like that. It has to do with the following. Everybody’s trying to make money, that is the way how our world works.
the EPC of course, they are very closely looking at how to design the site and how to build it. And in reality, the O &M or the EPC contract may say that the asset should be built for a 25 year lifetime. They are really on the hook for two years. okay, so every EPC will have a different view on that. Some EPCs
Vikram (26:48) But
Arnoud (26:57) Maybe we’re building sites to keep themselves for longer, or maybe they want to make sure that sites were built really well. But inevitably and completely understandably, when you look at the numbers, you’re being asked every time internally, should we build it like this or that? Because this is slightly cheaper, this is slightly cheaper. And in the end, if your liability is two years, you will find that it is very attractive.
to build a site that will work very well, at least for the first few years, but maybe it’s not built to that extreme precision and quality that would mean that it doesn’t require anything else but normal maintenance for 25 years. It’s a real different concept.
we realized those two years that we had were actually really important. That was the moment for us to determine, to try to estimate if the plant would really last 25 years or if it wouldn’t. And I think we were very early with realizing this in the sector, maybe earlier than others, maybe not everybody else, but in the frontline, if you like. So we organized
and you panel inspections on sites by laboratories. We were very early with drone inspection ⁓ and you know we were ⁓ we would contact the manufacturers of the inverters for example to make sure that they would come to site to make sure that they were that their devices were maintained properly and they would ⁓ honor
the warranty that was still ongoing. on HV, we were trying to see if partial discharge activity ⁓ measurements could help us there, ⁓ oil samples, visual inspections. I think what’s important to explain here is that because we realized the importance of this, ⁓ internally, we thought it was ⁓ a good idea to create a larger technical team. You saw that other companies
we’re very more focused on commercial asset managers. But foresight, I was privileged to build up a team. And I think we were in the end, were 10 people. And whenever we hired somebody, we would hire somebody with a specific expertise so that the overall team would have a broader and broader expertise. And in the end, we had a team that was very good at complex to diligence.
asset management, in-depth performance monitoring, construction monitoring. I would really like to take this opportunity to say, and I often say this, that I still feel that by Produs, the cheaper that foresight has actually been building this team, this team that was so good at doing all this.
Vikram (30:00) You get to look back on your colleagues and hopefully they are all progressing in their careers. Because of the nature of these big infrastructure projects, always ⁓ a certain amount of risk. We can’t really talk about any confidential stuff. Generally speaking, from a risk management point of view, any EBCs or funds that might listen to our podcasts or future managers or engineers or buyers,
I’ve heard this so often, the EPC is only on the hook for two years, the EPCs themselves have said that we only need to look after this or do O &M for two years for any project that we might do the engineering, procurement and construction for. But from a legal standpoint, did you have any experience that proves otherwise? Once you’ve done your final acceptance testing at the end of the two years and had a handover, the project, if it should have a 25 year design life and it’s completely
turn
Arnoud (31:03) Sure. Well, as you said in the beginning, I can’t go into any specific detail, but I can explain how the process works. So why is the fact so important? The fact is important because of two reasons. I think the first reason is that it’s also the moment when the EPC warranty expires. So let’s say on any component defects or issues with design, that is the last moment where you can pick that up.
But more importantly, when we talk about performance ratio, right? So this is a KPI, a key performance indicator, of course, in the solar industry, which is a measure for what the performance is of your plants. And this is contractually fixed. So there would be certain amounts of PR at certain level.
that the site would need to be able to do. And this is measured across those two years. And if it falls short, and this is indeed important, it’s not just that the EPC is required to compensate you for the losses that you’ve suffered in those two years because of the shortage. It’s actually calculated going forward as well. there are 25 years, or 23 years left.
So there is of course a bit of net present value involved. So it’s not exactly like that. But you would calculate, know, what would I have generated had it done the right PR and it hasn’t now. So what are my losses over all of that this time? know, so there will be certain calculation that both parties would have agreed on that moment of signing the EPC. So this is why it’s so important because, you know, it can really be a significant amount. Now the good news, of course, that the EPC
It’s often also the O during the first two years, so they can monitor the site as well and they have two years time to review this and to mitigate the risk of this happening at the end because it is much better for them, course, to resolve things during those two years than having to be liable for something that is calculated going forward in a way I just explained.
Vikram (33:25) Fantastic. And you mentioned, you know, the solar roller coaster or what we say the solar coaster as an abbreviation, you know, and it’s just been a boom and bust industry. You know, first there’s been changes in freedom tariffs in Germany, in Spain, in other countries, and then we had the grid connection deadlines and we had the MIP and anti-dumping duties. And then we had the UK freedom tariff cost reductions and, you know, lots of high profile company failures. So,
It’s been tough for the EPCs to even keep going because ⁓ the margins have reduced and the volumes have picked up. it’s an interesting point about the design life and what happens to these projects for the remaining 23 years or now people are talking about 40-year solar farms. then in 2019, you transitioned to another company. Please, again, forgive me if I pronounced this wrong. it Kintess or Quintess?
Arnoud (34:24) Both names are often used. So yeah, I call it Quintas energy. ⁓ yes, indeed. So ⁓ I had the opportunity to move back to Spain and then moving to Quintas allowed me to actually work from home on the southern coast of Spain. you know, after my family had been moving around,
quite a few times, this was a great opportunity to settle down. And the other opportunity that was there is that, so it’s a little bit about Kintz before I continue. Kintz is an assets manager in solar and storage and started in 2007. But I know them already since 2012 because we took them on board at Forsyte.
as well for some of the services that they provide. they, back at the time, of course, they grew a lot, just like Forsyte did. And today, you know, the great thing is that we have now over eight gigawatts of solar and some storage under management in various countries like Spain, UK, Italy, Australia.
And already a few years ago, our clients, they were often requesting services that were outside of the asset management scope. So in order to provide them with those services in 2019, just when I joined, we started Kintel’s advisory. And it has been a really interesting experience because after all the things that I
got involved in over the previous years, I now had the opportunity to, you know, to be involved with all kinds of different clients and portfolios in the country that I just mentioned. And, and, you know, I have been exposed to lots of different things. So if I was already exposed to a lot of interesting, new things every day in foresight, it has only continued or even intensified. ⁓
I would say what has been real change in the sector, logically, is that where, you mentioned earlier with the solar coaster, particularly in the early years, 2013, 14, 15, I was involved in a new acquisition almost on a weekly basis, or maybe every two weeks, that was how things went, just acquire, acquire, acquire. Now, of course, most of the funds
They have a large portfolio and they can’t grow that quickly anymore. And so now it’s all about performance of what you have, optimizing what you have. ⁓ There is of course, repowering happening. ⁓ There may be some claims, there may be all kinds of issues. yeah, it’s all, but there’s also the development and construction that’s also going on, of course, at the same time. So there’s a lot going on.
And that’s logical, of course, with the goal of going to net zero 2050 with intermediate goals like the 2030 goal. You can only imagine if first all our electricity should be renewable, but then also all our cars should also be electrical. And eventually we would want to even make cement or steel in a sustainable way. You can only imagine what that means for the solar sector.
So, yeah, very exciting, but also as you just said, the ups and downs are here too. We have so much work ahead, but at the same time, it’s so difficult, right? The grid is almost full. There’s maybe more opposition to solar plants, especially large ones, because there are more and more. So, now the challenges keep changing. We need to deal with those in one way or another.
Vikram (38:42) And you said 8GW of assets under management, is it mostly solar?
Arnoud (38:47) Yes, yes, we do solar and storage. ⁓ Yeah, indeed.
Vikram (38:52) And in your day to day role, know, what sort of things do you get involved with and what do you expect from potential partners that may look to work
Arnoud (39:01) with
you. Yeah. So I mean, again, there are so many different areas. I mean, if I mentioned a few, so obviously if it is about new development or construction, ⁓ then, you know, there’s a lot to think about. are, you know, the storage, of course, there is bifacial, ⁓ there is also, you know, how do you work with your contractors, you know, that has changed as well over time.
especially if you want to build a portfolio, it’s all about creating teams and creating relationships. So there’s a lot going on over there. But also in the operational side, as I mentioned earlier, one thing that has been really interesting is that you can see that clients are moving away from trying to deal
⁓ on an incident by incident basis with their portfolio. Because when an incident happens, of course, ⁓ you can repair things as quickly as possible, but it may still take time. And in the meantime, you have business in interruption, and you’re always surprised by something. difficult to manage your cash flow. It’s difficult to manage your investors’ expectations. So you can see there is an increasing interest in risk management. To which extent can you apply risk management to solar?
many sectors have that, you you wouldn’t wait for an airplane to fail, right? You would have a process in place to reduce risk, calculate risk, reduce risk. So you can apply similar things to every sector in this case, solar. So, you know, one thing that we’re seeing is, know, how can we, you know, how can clients control and manage their portfolio by having a clear picture of all the type of risks and all the risks that they have in their portfolio. And then
in advance and deal with those that they want to deal with by mitigating in some way or another, and then bringing down the amount of instance. So you are investing more in mitigation, but of course you should be able to pay that by having less costs due to instant repair and particularly business interruption, which is what you would reduce mostly when you mitigate things in advance. Maybe one other thing to mention, which has also been ⁓ something more recent.
security. you know, in the early days, security was an afterthought for most asset owners. It wasn’t really affecting the production and there was no real track record of theft. now at Forsight, back in the days, we always insisted on having a ⁓ very good and capable security system. But, you know, sometimes other ⁓ owners were tempted or hadn’t really realized or hadn’t asked for
something like that. the EPCs were maybe left more free to do whatever they want. So eventually maybe we ended up with just, you know, protection fence. And if the wire was physically cut in the fence, then maybe the alarm would go, but why would, who would, you know, cut deliberately, you know, a wire. So, know, we’ve seen that kind of things. So I think what we now see is since then there have been more thefts.
Every country where there’s already beginning, there tends to be very little and thieves start to realize what solar parks are, where they are, and what they can get there and how to break in. ⁓ We’ve also dealt with that by, for example, how can you spend your money in the most efficient way? For example, does every park need to have the same type of security or does the park, maybe if it’s next to a river,
you really need to have the same kind of investment than another park. one thing that we found, for example, was that if an alarm goes, if there’s an alarm, you think, okay, that’s it. We now know something is happening, but they normally send the guards, especially if you’re not sure you can’t send the police, you send the guards. When we looked into this, we realized that the guards
Vikram (43:14) Right
Arnoud (43:19) These are always different people. There’s a very huge amount of people working as guards at night and the chances of the same car being sent out to the same solar park twice are slim. So since they are new to us, they would not have had an induction by the operator and therefore you would expect them not to be allowed to go on to site, especially not at night with all the dangers there as well. the next question is, what is the value of a security system
If all it does, it triggers somebody to go to the front gate shining a torch into a 50 megawatt site, 100 hectares of terrain. What’s that going to do? Finding answers to those kinds of questions is, for example, one of the very, very many things that we’ve been doing lately. It’s very interesting to see that after all of those years, in the beginning, especially when people would say solar parks run themselves.
And people couldn’t think of any kind of problem. Like panels don’t need maintenance. Transformers will last 50 years as they always did until solar. And what could possibly go wrong, right? This was in 2011. And I’ve seen that every single day I’m learning something new. Every single day I’m addressing a new problem. And it’s very exciting. And I hope I’ll be doing this until I retire, to be honest.
Vikram (44:44) Absolutely, know, solar cost is a very important thing because, know, to solve climate change, need the energy to become very, very competitive. But in terms of the construction quality, you know, and the maintenance, you know, if you buy cheap, you buy twice, you know, and we’re learning that, you you talk about transformers, it’s even worse in energy storage, the transformer failure rate, and it’s something we learn for the future. But in terms of security,
What are the high risk areas? From my own perspective, people love to steal copper because it used to be 5 euros per kilo, now 8 or 9 euros per kilo and it’s very easy to calculate from a data sheet how many tons of copper you have. One of the things we did mitigate is trying not to use any copper when we can help it. String cable as well, it’s tin copper so it’s not that easy to recycle. People don’t always know that, they steal it and then you find it dumped somewhere.
But from your actual primary source perspective, what are the high risk areas in terms of security that needs to be guarded against?
Arnoud (45:46) Well, you made a very good point. of course, not having copper on site or as minimum as possible, that would be the first step. Of course, that’s not always easy when your plant is already built. you know, it starts already as you just very good point out, it starts at the time that you design a plant, make sure that there is as little ⁓ that is worth stealing. So particularly copper wise. ⁓ And but yeah, otherwise, you know, the difficulty of solar plants is that you
You can’t, you can really only protect the perimeter around it. So, so it is really very much about detection and then finding a way ⁓ to interrupt any theft going on and minimize your losses. You can do a few things on site. You know, you could, for example, ⁓ fix panels onto the structure, you know, with fixing material that’s not easy to undo. ⁓
But ⁓ again, against cabling, what can you do against somebody cutting cables? That is very difficult. So it really is important that you detect and deter and intervene. ⁓ So it is a ⁓ challenge. Solar parks are always built far away on cheaper land. So that’s why I’m mentioning it. It is maybe something that still escapes
people’s attention. But it is just like you want the site to be available 100 % of the time on a day-to-day basis. So you want to fix quickly an inverter or something like that. But sometimes security is a of an afterthought. But that doesn’t affect the day-to-day generation. But if there is suddenly a huge theft, your plans could be down for months to come while it’s being repaired. And while you need a source,
you equipment, etc. So it is one of those things that isn’t immediately on somebody’s radar until it’s too late.
Vikram (47:50) My opinion of security is there’s a lot of solar panels on site so it would be very difficult for to steal all of them. They weigh 20 kilograms so they’re quite big like TVs and carrying so many of them is very difficult but on the other side cables are a lower percentage but people can wrap up the whole string cable and your whole site’s down suddenly or if they take out a high voltage cable or the main DC or LVAC it affects a massive
volume of sight and one of the things we didn’t talk about in 2019 you moved to Spain with the quintest is that 2020 you know whole lives were changed with the pandemic and you know this changed lots of priorities for people you know lots of changes one of the rude things in terms of r &d disruption was you know we were working on ways of eliminating string cable completely
by designing a solar bus system where you can plug the modules directly into a bus collection system and then directly bury the bus cable. It’s difficult to steal cable which is directly buried in 900 millimeters or one meter deep in ground. So it’s something we have on the radar for the future, you know, to get completely get rid of string cable. know, we sell a high quality string cable but if someone asks you what is the best way to deal with string cable risk, I would say to completely get rid of it because it’s…
other word 1500 or 1000 volt DC is susceptible to theft also other issues like moisture ingress and so on but we won’t go too much deep into that you know the the goal of this podcast is to discuss the future of of solar photovoltaics as an interesting area as a potential technology to decarbonize and to increase energy security from your perspective you know what what is the future of solar photovoltaics how much energy can we
generate from solar in Europe.
Arnoud (49:40) Right. Well, mean, it seems to me clear that, you know, solar has, there will be a lot more solar, but it will be very rocky path. As I mentioned before, know, grid is a problem and every, whole world wants to do it at the same time. but again, if we want to have net zero,
and you know, across everything, then as I mentioned earlier, the amount of solar that you would need to create perhaps hydrogen that would then be necessary, you know, for, know, for other sectors like cement or steel, or maybe, you know, bolts or whatever, you know, that would be just a massive amount. So perhaps, you know, private networks could
be something so perhaps powering directly a hydrogen generation facility with solar, like that. The challenge will be to keep the public happy. Sometimes you see those very large solar parks that I think you mentioned also in an earlier podcast, which from a solar perspective are very exciting. ⁓ But sometimes I worry a little bit how that may affect
uh, know, uh, the acceptability or the acceptance of, of people that live nearby. So, you know, and, know, uh, I think we have to be careful just like wind. Um, you know, people love the idea of renewables, but nobody wants it really in a backyard. Now the benefit of solar is that it is typically only two meters high. And, um, you know, it could still ruin somebody’s view who used to be looking on a green meadow and now he’s looking at a blue black.
see of solar panels, but at least it’s not creating any moving shadows across your property, for example. But yeah, I think it will be very challenging. There is a huge opportunity, of course, and I think that if you want to have a number, it will be very difficult. Now, of course, solar is just a few percent if you look at it worldwide.
You know, logically, if you look at everything at this oil and everything that’s gas, you know, and if we keep nuclear in the mix, which is what it looks like that we’re going towards, then, you know, it would have to be double digits for sure, right? 10, 20, 30, 40%. And if we are able to every time improve the idea of storage. So of course now with battery storage, now there are other very exciting things with storage, right?
many, many different ways of doing it. I’ve seen a warehouse with cranes that just lifts ⁓ heavy concrete blocks up and down, and that is also storage, if you like. So if we find ways to solve that, then we can every time increase the percentage of renewables and solar into the mix. So yeah, I think it’s going to be a lot, but it’s going to be really complicated getting there. So we need a lot of support.
from governments as well and I think to clear the road towards net zero in 2050.
Vikram (53:03) Absolutely. I did some research last night in preparation for this podcast. The solar may be small as a percentage overall worldwide, but the numbers in comparison to nuclear are absolutely astronomical. China has the top capacity cumulative in gigawatt peak, 575 gigawatts approximately at the end of this year. Europe, 252 gigawatts. think Germany will install 14 gigawatt peak this year.
USA 161, Japan 90, India 70. In the UK, we are closer to the 15 gigawatt peak mark. This is the mark in which we have most experienced. There is a boom happening in Germany at the moment. Spain 27, I have here written down, I’m not sure if it’s correct, but what we are heading towards is a potential, I’m forecasting a potential boom in the UK solar industry because we need to do five or six gigawatts per year until 2035 and there are new roadmaps being published.
but there’s massive problems with the grid, know, people are getting for new developments grid connection dates of 10, 15 years into the future. Do you have any any perspective on that yourself? Are you engaging in any kind of project development work?
Arnoud (54:09) Well, yes, so Kintas has another arm which is called Kintas CleanTech. So that is our development arm. So I’m definitely up to speed on that to your right. There are grid connections that you can accept now but won’t materialize until up to 10, 15 years into the future. So this is very unfortunate that we haven’t
been able to foresee this five or 10 years ago, I also recognize that it would have been difficult that you asked me 10 years ago, you know, should we invest billions into upgrading the grid? would probably say, well, maybe the money should be spent somewhere else at the moment. But that is what we should have done really, if we wanted to have a clear road towards those goals. So yeah, it’s very exciting, the numbers that you say, and they will continue to grow for sure. But yeah, the real
challenges to develop a site these days can really take a very long time. then if you add to that the time before the grid becomes available, it becomes a very, again, a very strange situation as we’re used to in solar. mean, we always, it’s never anything similar to a normal average sector out there. And we always have to do things in very extreme ways. And it’s just no different this time. But I think, as I said before,
We know this, can’t do this on our self by ourselves, right? We can’t create a grid. So we can do some private wires. That’s not going to solve everything. So we, this needs to be resolved from a government level as well to really be able to meet those, those goals.
Vikram (55:57) Absolutely. And then project development, it’s an art form in itself. I’m learning as well, you know, and people caught in crazy numbers, like 200,000 pounds per megawatt peak. And now if you put that in perspective to a large heavy industry, use a steel plant. And there’s people knocking on their doors, offering to do free project development, which has a bit of a contradiction, you know, because on the one side, you’ve got this curtailment penalties. If you’re a steel plant or a massive factory, concrete, aggregates factory, and you make you bricks, if you’re exceeding your
energy allowance, you’re getting fined by the DNO or the utility, whoever, because you’re going above your grid limitation, which sounds perfect for energy storage and solar. On the other hand, the developers, they tend to focus on projects which are 20 megawatts plus to have a return on investment for spending the money on studies and getting everything together. So it’s an area that I would like to explore in more details as we go forward. You know, we’re working on software for this basis as well, try to make it
as democratized as possible for people to calculate their own private wires, something that we get into. In terms of the technology, do you have any idea about AC coupled or DC coupled solar farms?
Arnoud (57:10) Sure. Well, I think the answer to that is it depends very much on where you are, especially in solar, in every country deals with it in a different way. ⁓ There are different ⁓ schemes that would make ⁓ storage profitable and they can be different depending where you are. So in some countries, AC coupled and having it directly connected to the grid.
would allow you to maybe to connect or to provide services, services ⁓ in certain ways, but in other places where maybe those grid services are not, they don’t exist perhaps. So then you rather have a DC couple so you can do some big shaving or things like that. So I don’t think there is an answer to, a definite answering as in storage should be AC or DC coupled. think it depends on.
what is available ⁓ to create income from that location where you want to install it. So it’s a bit like central or string inverters. Some things just don’t seem to ⁓ end up in ⁓ one final ⁓ point, doesn’t converge to the final solution everybody’s going to adopt. You still see that designs differ.
throughout the world from one country to the other and even from one developer or designer to the other.
Vikram (58:40) Absolutely, know, it’s a theory is very different to reality as we as we learn being in the industry for more than a decade already, you know, because from from a theoretical point of view, you know, if you’re looking at purely for engineering, I would say DC coupled with battery battery and PV makes a lot of sense because you have fewer conversion steps, you can have the same buzz bar for PV as you can for battery circuits. And it seems very nice because we try to focus on energy efficiency.
lowering as much as possible because we hear investors talking about yield of 4 % or 8%. We’ve seen sites which can have 8 % power losses only in the cables, not considering inverters, not considering transformer losses and so on and other things like, know, earth leakage and so on. So when we say DC coupled, mean purely you lose less energy if you’re working on the DC side.
That’s why I’m in. But in terms of, because you have such a massive portfolio in terms of the inverter technology, know, lots of people seem to prefer string inverters now. what is your view? Do you prefer central or string? Or do you see a role for both?
Arnoud (59:49) That’s obviously a very good question that I’ve discussed many times over the years. And you know what? Now that time has passed, I think there is another element to take into account that maybe wasn’t so obvious earlier on. And that is the moment of re-powering. In the early days, you would have your maintenance reserve account.
And that was mostly calculated based on the fact that the inverters would need to be exchanged after 10, 12 or 15 years, depending on which financial base case you’re looking at. you know, but we didn’t really think about what that would look like. So now that this period, this time has now come and, you know, there are people, are funds and owners out there that now need to replace inverters. And of course, what you find is that things have moved on.
So for example, inverters have changed voltage. ⁓ So on the DC side, for example, you now work with a higher voltage. ⁓ The capacity of central inverters, and well, for both of them have increased. In 2008, for example, I installed the string inverter was a six kilowatts SMA Sunny Boy. That was a string inverter. And now a string inverter is a 250k.
you know, Huawei or Sungrow or whatever. of course with Decentral that has gone from, you know, in Spain because of the tariff, you you need to have a hundred kilowatt inverters. And so that was a central inverter, it a hundred kilowatt inverter. Now, of course you have a four megawatt inverter. so you can’t, and of course the other thing is nobody’s going to keep.
those old systems in their portfolio, you know, if you are a manufacturer, because you know, you, you can’t, that would be means that you need to have every year you make a new system. after 15 years, you would need to have 15 systems in your portfolio for sale. So they are no longer there. So you can’t take away one system and put in another system. So for any solution, whether it’s, you know, central or string, this is causing a problem. But,
If you don’t, you know, so, you will most certainly need to rewire your, your, your, your strings, et cetera. What I think that we’ve seen happening a few times interesting solution is some to put a string. Inverters, but centralized. So what you do is you don’t want to rewire your site. So you don’t still want to run all the cables towards a central location. But then because you can’t really get, you know, the old one megawatts.
station anymore, you put four 250 kilowatts string inverters and then you hook it all up together. example, know, along these lines, you know, we’ve seen activity, we’ve seen repowering being done in this way. So it’s an unexpected route, maybe, right? That, you know, to use a string inverter that were obviously distributed, but use them centralized as a answer to the situation that we’re in today.
Vikram (1:03:07) Absolutely and in terms of modules as well the sizes have completely changed so practically if you need to replace modules you know in terms of repowering what sort of challenges you might face.
Arnoud (1:03:19) Yeah, that’s also a very good point. Of course, a lot of sites are repowering or maybe they have to deal with, they had maybe an accident, wind accident or theft and they now need new panels. That also happens and you’re right, the old panels, they don’t exist anymore or they may exist, but it’s complicated. So the most logical way forward usually is that you would depopulate part of your site.
Vikram (1:03:36) Mm-hmm.
Arnoud (1:03:47) Ideally, for example, the area that’s connected to one inverter or one MPPT or one inverter. And you would lift those panels and use those in the rest of your site as spares. And then you would repopulate that area with the new panels. So that will lead to maybe a different electrical design. But because it’s connected all together to one MPPT or one inverter, that should work. But you may find that you need to make changes to your structure.
So, you know, this is complicated because the manufacturer of the structure may not be there anymore or not be willing to sign off ⁓ a design change. So as an investor where you, you you have to, can’t just, you know, make a change in your design and hope for the best. You know, you can’t have panels being blown off and hit somebody, you know, and, create. So you need to always know that everything that you do is technically sound. So, you know, the challenges are how can I.
If the panels are of a different size, how do I know that they’re really compatible? What do I need to do to the structure? Who can sign it off for me? What do I need to do electrically? But typically, if you can’t get the same panels or you can’t do like for like, you can’t just lift one out and put another one in. If that’s not possible anymore, the trick is to depopulate one area of your plant, use those for spares. Those can be popped in any rails on site and then just repopulate that whole area with new panels.
Vikram (1:05:16) Fantastic. You know, you raise a very important point, which is lots of the companies that were there in the early days and don’t exist anymore, you know, and to have some sort of continuity going forward is lots of new entries. Lots of EPCs don’t exist anymore either. And so for me, it’s been very exciting talking to you because you’ve been in the industry from almost the very beginning, working with space-based solar cells with concentrated photovoltaics is the first of.
I’ve heard about it and I will certainly read more into that. hopefully, when people are working with you and contacting you, they get the experience that you have. And I hope you will stay involved in the PV business for the next few decades at least. And I’ve certainly enjoyed this podcast and will listen back and think deeply about the things you’ve said. yeah, any last words for your listeners before we finish our session?
Arnoud (1:06:12) Well, I mean, first of all, really enjoyed this session as well, very much. And I enjoyed very much the previous ones that you’ve done. ⁓ So, and I hope you’ll do many more. I’ll be listening and I’ll be posting them on my LinkedIn page as well. I’ve heard already from some of my contacts that they were very happy to have found your podcast. So I think this is going to be a big success. And ⁓ well, about speaking or a message to the listeners.
Well, ⁓ you know, ⁓ I can only say that if there’s anything that you need, anything that I can help with, you know, feel free to get in touch. I know there a lot of challenges out there. And as I said before, every day we’re learning something else. Every day there is another problem that a solution is found for. So, you know, that’s ⁓ what I enjoy most. So if, you know,
⁓ any challenges in the solar sector, technical, of nature, I’ll be very happy to learn about them and get involved.
Vikram (1:07:23) Perfect. Thanks very much for joining us on it.
Arnoud (1:07:26) Thank you, Vikram.
Vikram (00:01) Hi, welcome again to another episode of the Future of Solar Photovoltaics. My name is Vikram from Ventus Care Wars and Connectivity. Today I’m delighted to have one of my best friends in the industry, Mr. Stefano Girolami, who I met during some hectic times at Solar Sentry. Stefano, welcome.
Stefano (00:22) Thank you very much and very good to see you again and have this very interesting chat together. And thanks for the opportunity to participate in your podcast series.
Vikram (00:37) Fantastic. You know, we are always busy. You’re an engineer and you we are always working to deadlines and we never really get to talk about ⁓ anything about the general context. Stefan, are you able to give us some idea about your background about who you are, where you come from?
Stefano (00:56) Okay, I am an engineer. I’m quite mixed up. I have a quite mixed up background also on the engineering studies. I am from Napoli, which is a city in the south of Italy. ⁓ And that’s where I started my studies in management engineering, which is some sort of industrial engineering.
course, but it also has more management and ⁓ organizational and risk management sort of activities within the course. At the end of the first three years getting the, it the bachelor, the equivalent to a bachelor, I wasn’t very much enthusiast about what will come next ⁓ in the university in Napoli.
I was very fascinated already by renewable energy, not because I actually went through any readings or actually focused on the topic. remember one day just thinking of what will be the topics of the future and among these, which one you want to build a career within. So I to go off the beaten track.
if you like. Renewables, obviously, was the obvious choice for me because it was an international market allowing you to travel and meet people. At the same time, was a market that was proposing something good, resilient. I really wanted to get into this market. However,
In Italy, we didn’t have many courses about renewables in universities. And in Naples, there wasn’t anything at all. I’ve got this six month spare and I need to learn English. I need to take the test and get my admission to the University of Milan. said, okay, probably the best way to learn English is go abroad, go to an English speaking country and force yourself in doing that rather
Vikram (03:16) jump at the deep end straight away.
Stefano (03:18) Exactly. Rather than buy a book and keep talking in Italian with your friends. just literally graduated on probably the 15th of March or something like that. And two days after 17th of March, 2015, I just took off to London. And that was the beginning of, ⁓ call it my adult experience, traveling Europe and traveling the renewable energy markets.
Okay, the first six months, I won’t spend much time, but the most important thing, I managed to start learning English, which was the target. But through the time in London, I met new people and talking to some of these, I was exposed to the possibility of doing a master in renewable energy in the UK. So I had these two choices, the master in Milan.
who would last for two years and was very Italian based anyway, or ⁓ keep staying in the UK and get a master in a British university, so also perfection in English and open up also your network of people from different parts of the world. So I decided to stay. I applied to renewable energy system engineering.
Master of Science at the University of Gidford in Zagreb. Very nice place. And that’s where I went to study. I completed that master in a year ⁓ at the beginning of 2016. And that’s it. I was out on the job market to get my place in the renewable energy industry. Obviously at the very
Vikram (04:48) Right.
Stefano (05:13) very, very right time. Just the feeding tariff just got canceled probably five days before I graduated. I said, yes, now you’re ready to go in the market. So I really struggled. I really struggled to find a job in the industry. It was the time of big redundancies. You definitely remember that time. It wasn’t a good time for the industry. All the big players were getting, unfortunately, rid of teams and people.
because of the feeding tariff. So I struggled a little bit, did a lot of small jobs here and there just to keep me searching for a job in renewables. I actually declined any jobs you can think about, like all the consulting, all the more general engineering jobs. I really wanted to get into renewables. I wouldn’t compromise, not even as a start.
And that sort of gave me, I was, was recompensated by that. And I eventually landed a job in photon energy, which is at the time was a small EPC and design ⁓ firm for solar rooftop in, based in Reading.
Small company in Redding, so I was commuting every day from London, but it was probably the best first experience in solar I could ask for. I just went there, I started from the basics. Learn how to use AutoCAD, learn how to do a layout, learn how to do a PV system, learn all the small parts. Good thing about rooftops, especially small ones, is that you see the whole thing and it’s quite manageable.
So you can actually see all the small details and then slowly but surely you’re able to scale them up quite easily. So that was a good experience. I stayed there for eight months almost. the feeding tariff was hitting them as well, even though they were doing some different sort of activity at the time, which was more commercial and residential. yeah, so time wasn’t
going very much in their favor. So I could see that they were rejecting some jobs and potentially cutting personnel as well. I started looking under cover for some other job, probably a bit closer to my home in London. And at the end, ⁓ found South Century, which was…
You know, don’t win after uni, you go out of uni and you got your best three, you know, that you want to land in. And SolarSentry was definitely my first one, like top of the list. I actually, I even applied for a office management ⁓ desk receptionist role at SolarSentry after uni. said, okay, if that’s the way you get into SolarSentry, I’ll get through. Yeah, exactly. And then, and then we’ll see. But no.
Vikram (08:27) I’ll get for in the door.
Stefano (08:31) I met Anne Martinet, which was the person who hired me and who was my manager for the whole time, most of the time at Solar Century. And there was a very good feeling and connection from the, even from the first interview we done. And I was in Solar Century, was able to, you know that because you’ve, you know, we’ve been working together. You’ve been to the offices so many times. You’ve been, you know,
cooperating with South Center even a lot earlier than I was in. you you remember that sort of vibe that you could feel entering the office in South Center. was vibrating, it was full of excitement. you you could tell people were really there to make a change, you know, and they really believed that. No one was actually going to work eight hours shift, just saying, you I have to go to work. Everyone was, I could feel that sort of, you know,
excitement on the first interview already. yeah, and I really got along with Anne from the very beginning. So that’s where it started, my journey with Solar Century, ⁓ which, you know, looking back, I think I’ve been probably the most lucky person to get that opportunity because I entered Solar Century in a moment of change. So
I entered our century when they, that you also worked on, ground mounted, but they had recently signed a deal with the IKEA for the PV on rooftops. And it was a set of one megabyte rooftop sites on the IKEA’s across the UK. And I was assigned to that. So, you know, I just learned how to do some auto-cutting PV system. And then Le Martin was okay. Here is your.
your project, actually your portfolio of project, you just go. So let’s, know, okay, I’ve never done this, no idea how to do this, but you know, let’s try. And that was incredible experience because, you know, when you are a project engineer, you have to design, yes, okay, that’s part of the job. So you’re the big part of the job you have to design, but what
I really wanted to, which is part of my, probably my character, know, my behavioral tendency is to get in connection with people I work, you know, creating. I don’t like working on compartments and this, you will see this is a constant thing throughout my career in the different places I’ve been. I don’t like compartments. I like everyone talking, everyone supporting each other. So my approach was
And I was the youngest, I was the least experienced, but still I was the one going there and saying, okay, I’ll come to your office, to the EPC contractor rather than to the project management and say, okay, let’s talk. I don’t know how to do this. What do you think? And we managed to create this team, project team on the IKEA, which was very exciting. There was this contractor from the North.
very competent, very expert on ⁓ all the electrical connection, very good contractor. The project manager was the project managers because I had a different one on each project. They were very open to discussion as well on all the different topics. So that’s very good experience. I think we did a very nice job. I talked to one of the project managers lately and he told me that the projects are, you know…
going well, no particular issues. So it’s a very nice experience on rooftops. I loved rooftops, but as we finished the last one, SolarCentury was changing in the meantime, Pan-European IPP developer. a completely ⁓ massive change in the structure because you move from having
50 % of your team in project management and engineering to having probably 10 % of your team there. And then a lot more, you know, huge amount of new people doing different stuff. But the very key thing was that there was a culture shock because obviously when you are an EPC, you work to get things done. So you do them at the best you can. You manage all the risks. You are very conservative sometimes.
You you also want to save on the single pound to make the project do it. And development is a completely different story. Development is, know, let’s manage the risk as much as we want now, but then we’ll see, you know, because it’s down the line. So, Saracen 3 was shifting that way.
But there was a country at the time, which was the Netherlands, where instead there was construction also on top of the betterment. So I was able to jump on a new construction project, which was Black Vede, the 110 megawatt PV project in the Netherlands, which was, I think still is, Solar Century’s largest project in the Netherlands. It wasn’t a difficult project.
design-wise, know, it’s a fixed structure. It was quite, how can you say, it quite, it was replicated, you know, it was blocks of two megawatts with a travel station in string inverters and then replicated 54 times to get to the total capacity because you don’t have one project but you actually have 54 projects communicating to each other through a DNO and then through a connection point. So that was a very
tricky one, I learned a lot about PPC, ⁓ compliance and SCADA system and understanding how important that is. We built the first digital twin in solar century history with BlackVedder. We resized cables and it was a very nice experience, very long, obviously, site. ⁓ We started
probably 2019 or end of 2018 and we went through COVID. So an extra challenge was COVID at some point because we couldn’t have more than a certain number of contractors on site at the same time. And that obviously happened in the peak of construction. So yeah, that experience was good. And in the meantime, I started being the…
reference point for technical reference point for Italy for developing the Italian pipeline and the UK pipeline. So at some point after probably three years, years and a half, found myself being the engineering manager for Italy, UK and the Netherlands. I’ve been three teams there and it was a very diverse workload because one side you had construction and pre-construction, on the other side you had
UK development, which is a lot lighter than Italian development, but it’s more complex on grid. And then on the other side, Italian development, which is a lot more complex on length, but less on grid. So I was getting a little bit of experience on many things. And then the moment came that Stadcraft completed the acquisition of Solar Century.
First reaction was a little bit of uncertainty in the team because I said, okay, what are we going to do? So essentially it was a very well ⁓ built machine. worked very well also on its international shape. The different countries were communicating to each other. We built a structure which was replicated in each country. we achieved a very nice
structure considering the huge growth we had in less than three years. we, know, a bit of uncertainty then we came into Starcraft, which is completely different, you know, company. It’s huge. It’s very ⁓ based on energy sale. it was utility. Utility. the real difference between a light IPP and a utility, we could see it from day one.
But still, we were very excited to get into Strat. Not lucky, but we were rewarded for what we built at SolarCentury because essentially, Stratcraft didn’t have ⁓ a so well-structured solar unit. They were more focusing on wind and hydro power. they actually bought SolarCentury to fill the gap of solar to become one of Europe’s largest solar developers as well.
So we were able to fit with no much struggle. We obviously went through a period of restructuring and adjusting and reshaping a little bit the engineering and the delivery team. But that was relatively quick. They had trust in us from day one. There was very good team collaboration to get things done. And yeah, so that was good.
And then I stayed in Stratcraft. When we moved to Stratcraft, I eventually was moved to Italy only, also because Italy was getting big. We moved from a team of two back in 2017 to a team of now they are about 90 people. you can imagine. By the time I left, they were already 50 people. So there was a huge growth in Stratcraft Italy.
And it was another very nice experience. Eventually I moved to where I am today, which is in Novo Renewables, which is again a light upon European light IPP. Very much like, okay, let’s call it the ambition is very much like SolarCentury. That’s what we’re trying to build. Okay. And it’s super exciting because I saw SolarCentury at the end and now I’m able
I was given the opportunity to build something like Solar Sentry from scratch. the Solar Sentry has always been my, know, my light in the dark. know, I say, okay, how do we want to build a company? How do we want to build a team? Okay, let’s look at Solar Sentry. What did work and also what didn’t work, but, you know, let’s try to get to that level of engagement of people to feeling and excitement. And so that’s what we are doing now here.
I joined at the very beginning, I was probably the fifth person to join the company, other than the founder and the construction director. Today we are active on three countries and almost 45 people account and looking to probably double up this number next year. So having a lot of fun ⁓ developing in Italy, in the UK and in Spain.
So three countries and also very attached to it comes to work.
Vikram (20:28) Fantastic. I remember you coming, you were almost like a voice of calm and reason at Solar Century. I remember the first time I visited Solar Century offices, I think there was two or three of them. There was Waterloo, Sudden, and I think Union Street, and then Southern. And first thing that should hit me when I should visit Solar Century was all the trophies they had won for so many different things. know, first ⁓ projects of many different kinds, they own modules.
Stefano (20:43) Thank
Vikram (20:56) developing the MCS standards which established the industry. so when you came, think when was this time around 2018 you joined Source Entry?
Stefano (21:05) Yeah,
Vikram (21:11) So straight after the B-word, straight after Brexit when our lives were turned upside down. At that time, Solstentia was a very hectic environment. were maybe 300 people there and we were delivering to Chile, tense negotiations and first experience of reverse auctions. We were working with you on B &Q and IKEA.
And I think lots of people were having a burnout because they had delivered so much in such a short period of time. Between 2012 and 2016, most of the megawatts were delivered.
Stefano (21:45) And then the monsters in Spain, the 500 megawatts in Spain, just to, know, when you think, okay, now we can just gigawatt in construction across Europe.
Vikram (21:51) Calm down, it’s only a footstep.
So we haven’t recovered from Chile, but we have 500 megawatts in Spain and we should do a site visit to B &Q because we need to do some batteries and do some things for IKEA. I think if you don’t make any mistakes, it means you don’t do any work. so people deliver so much as a whole century and they were almost the industry in itself that when you came, was like everyone had red faces because they were either tired or
worried about what mistakes they don’t know about or anything like that and so when we were very happy to start working with you Stefano because at this time we started to integrate a Chartered Electrical Engineer with us as well as Stephen McFadden to focus more on the development conversation to look at the energy values rather than on the pence per meter or pence per watt you know we started to really look at what makes a good string sizing, makes a good
Stefano (22:52) I remember the 40p target we gave all those sessions about getting to 40p per what peak the target that obviously we couldn’t achieve because after that there was Brexit and shortage and logistics issues. So never achieved that, but we were working towards that.
Vikram (23:14) The magic with SolarCentury was we would come and as you said earlier, there would always be a buzz in the office and we would have a whiteboard and everyone would draw ideas on how they can achieve cost reduction without compromising on quality. So we would look at either adding more modules to a string or looking at different inverter technologies. Even we were close to developing a solar bus solution at that time.
From your perspective, at which point did you think solar is serious technology? This is actually serious power plants and not only playing around with few modules.
Stefano (23:49) I think I always had the impression, obviously I’m young in this market, call it okay, because it’s eight years, yeah, less than eight years now. So I’ve always had the impression or at least the feeling that we were doing serious stuff. But I agree with you, your question is right because
there is this transition from solar, know, still now, now a little bit less, but especially at the beginning of my career, when people were asking me, know, people like friends or family, say, what’s your job? How do you do? And I said, okay, I’m an engineer in renewables. And they were saying, ah, I’d like to install some modules on my rooftop. yeah, but I don’t actually do that. I do power plants. And they were, ah.
Why? You can do a power plant. So it’s completely off the record that solar was an ⁓ energy source, an electricity source. So obviously now there’s a lot of hype around this market because of climate change, because of all the targets and stuff. So people now start to understand that solar is a power plant, but still we’re not there yet. But also
In the industry, in the industry, we know that solar is our power plant and it’s a serious source of energy, it’s a serious technology. But also within the industry, I think we need still to do the step, the next step, which is my belief. it’s not just a power plant, it’s the future of energy. Like we’re now shaping what will be
the equivalent of fossil fuel industry today. We’re looking at 10, 15 years timeline and we need to replicate that model, the fossil fuel. So that means we can’t still go around and say, no, we’re just doing the right things. We want to put modules there. we need to embark on more serious conversations and brainstorming on how we expect.
to make this work and starting from the key aspect, which is the grid, know, you know, we sort of saying, okay, we want to make a nice dinner and we go buy all the fancy stuff, but then we don’t have a table. So, you know, for, for dinner, ⁓ what do we do? You know, we, can think that solar is serious as much as you want, but if we don’t start talking to.
Talking about the grid, how to change the grid, how to digitalize the grid, how to think of solar in a different network, which is not just connect the project and inject energy. You could do that up to probably now. You can’t do it anymore from tomorrow on, just because the grid is not able to take it and it’s not the way forward. You have to think, okay, what’s going to be in 15 years the electricity?
and energy market and distribution networks. Okay, will be digital. Perfect. That means our solar needs to be digital. Okay, let’s focus on digitalization. It needs to be constant. Okay, let’s focus on battery storage. You know, we need to think of solar and wind, obviously, in a different scale, as the energy of the future and everything that that brings along.
And that means also lobbying, you know, go and influence governments, go and influence the European Union, go and influence big industry lobbies, because, you know, we can’t compete. What is clear now, today, is that we still can’t compete with our big competitor, which is the fossil fuel industry. We want to play the same game. We want to get them off the scene.
and get the place, replace them in energy production, but we’re not at that level. They have lobbies, they have power, they have all structure, which is energy market. They build and they can control. So we need to get there. That’s probably the greatest challenge of solar for becoming really serious, as you said.
technology is that the countries that is great is amazing simple this modular is cheap it’s perfect you know nothing more you can ask for more technologies just perfect it’s how to in you know integrate the technology into modern world that it’s really the challenge I guess
Vikram (28:52) And interesting you mentioned earlier that you’re young in this market, but you you’ve delivered 110 megawatt projects. You know, some people have never done that in their entire lives to give you an idea. Some countries don’t have 110 megawatts of solar to put things into perspective. know, there’s lots of industry terms, you know, because a small industry and it has had a lot of boom and bust cycles.
One of them is the solar coaster, which you experience firsthand with Brexit and with the feeling tariffs. But the other specific ⁓ industry term is relevant to Sol Sentry is if you see somebody at another company, they introduce their colleagues like he was a solar Centurion. This is a respect that Sol Sentry has in the market. And you said some advanced things like a digital twin for Black Wedding.
You know, these are things that people only dream about now because the standards have fallen and…
Stefano (29:55) building it by hand, know, with five computers. Today you have software that tries to do that. We were literally building it by hand and it was a nightmare. I don’t hide, it was a nightmare, but it was good.
Vikram (30:12) I remember seeing very precise drawings and everything was so neat and most of us all century has built a really well performing sites even today You know everybody has issues But generally, you know when you’re on a soul century site because everything’s clean the roads are nicely made and everything seems very professional You usually there isn’t a lot of work to do when it’s a repowering because it a soul century site But after soul century decided not EPC anymore
I started to a developer, lots of new companies entered the market and already disappeared because to build up processes which took almost 20 years for source entry and then to do it in the lockdown after Brexit, during an energy war, working remotely, it’s fantastic all this technology we have, but it doesn’t replicate the buzz we had coming to Farringdon or Southwark or Union Street and going in and
we would have just our little part with the cables or the lugs or connectors and we were very busy with it, but there will be 50 other people having meetings about something different, know, that kind of environment, it hasn’t really replicated itself. from your point of view, what were the key, without talking about any confidential, there was also Neostar as well, I think this one might have been a zinc mine or something like this. What was the key learning points from Black Wednesday for you?
Stefano (31:33) ⁓ Probably looking at construction and design was pay attention to details you are not an expert in. We were very good on SCADA and electrical and structural and mechanical and cables and we had all the right partners including yourself and Steve.
and very good conversations with everyone. We weren’t very specialized on sieve, but still we had to do a lot of sieve works there because we have to bury some ditches and redirect them. So bury the existing ditches and then ⁓ open new ones and then build roads across, you know, in between those ditches and we didn’t probably take.
seriously into account the impact that humidity and water could have a big learning point because ditches that we buried were completely soaked all the time with water on the surface. So we were having also problems with structures and installation and also storage of modules, pallet and stuff because it was too wet.
not the wet that you know on a solar site was probably lake because essentially the terrain was going down and the water was going up and that was because we didn’t give enough time, how do you call it, resting time to the land to compact before actually working on it. And the same happened to the new ditches that we opened, essentially raining, raining, raining and then
all the the length on the two sides where was falling within so blocking the water and we had hydraulic problems and then we also had sea-ville problem because we had to you know reopen the ditch and the roads were just built next to the ditch so as the length would slide from the know from the core from the sides of the ditch then the road will get not stable so most of the issues were on the on the seavill.
side of things and we weren’t expert on that. we, instead of, you know, probably hiring a civil person to do the job right and take probably a month more to look into details and stuff, we went quite confident on that and said, okay, you know what, we can do it. And then we had issues. Nothing too…
Too bad, it was manageable, but if you want a perfect site, then you have
Vikram (34:30) So the lesson is to hire the right people for the right jobs. know, hindsight is 20-20, know, as a soul, essentially so many things were happening at the same time. was remarkable the speed of the productivity. And then you went to Stackroft, Italy and you’ve moved on from there. What persuaded you to start your new challenge now? What was the point where you decided you need to make your next career move?
Stefano (34:58) ⁓ I’m an enthusiastic type of person, so I like challenges and that’s the real start of it because that’s what makes you consider something while you are in Stadcraft Italy. Because I was in Stadcraft Italy, the company was nice, the people were amazing, I had good friends and amazing colleagues and everything was fine. I was an engineering manager.
of one of the largest company in Europe. so, Stadcraft Italy was is, you know, the destiny of Stadcraft Italy is to be one of the key players in the Italian market on the long term. So everything was, you know, perfect. It’s just, why would you even consider something different? Because was…
really something different, know, wasn’t the same position on a likewise position in a different company. I would have never looked at anything like that. It was a different experience. was, okay, you’ve seen good companies built. Let’s try and build one from scratch. Okay, let’s see, what would you do better? How would you approach, you know, all the things, little things that you didn’t love?
you can make them better, can try, you know, and if you don’t try, this is the industry of trying, you know, there’s no set rules in this industry, everything changes from one day to the next. you really perfect the art of improvising and putting everything to question every day. And so I went, okay, let’s try and do it new, know, let’s try and do it all the things that I’ve, you know.
All those little things that I think are right from management style to how a company should work and initiatives within the company, how projects should be designed, how development should be done. Let’s ⁓ try. Let’s see if I can be right, if I can find out something more interesting and that works better. So that was the big drive. ⁓ And so far so good. I’m having a lot of fun.
I’m doing a lot of good stuff and that’s what I try to do. It’s come here and try to do development in a different way than what I’ve seen in the years because I was always coming from a utility or IPP which had both construction and development at the same time, especially in solar sentry.
less in Statcraft, but the approach was still that. So the engineering team is a delivery team. And that means that when you do development, you do development and the development call engineering for support. But engineering is not there. It’s not there developing the project. OK, what does that mean? it’s a comfort.
It’s a compartment, as I was telling you before. There’s development and then there is engineering. And what’s the main issue with that? Then you get to construction, to delivery of projects, and you have projects which are not able to build. You can’t build them costly. It just doesn’t work. And it could work in a first wave of development where it was very aggressive and you had nothing to lose. You could create value.
literally out of nothing, know, sign a land, ask for a grid and sell it for 25,000 euro megabit, you chop down, know, make a good amount of money and then you move on to the next one. But then we’re moving to a more mature stage of the market, especially in Italy, but also in the UK is way ahead, obviously. You need to do things right, especially if you are an IPP, you know, you need to make sure that what you
think of today, what you develop today, then is the way you want to build it, which does mean you won’t have problems because you know very well that doesn’t matter what you do, you will have problems in construction. But let’s try to minimize them. this way you add it. So it’s a project team that starts from origination. So you find a land, sign a land, and request a grid up to
energize the site and you have the same project team going along the way together. And so what comes out of this quality? ⁓
Vikram (39:42) And
you say, would you say Innova Renewables, are they a developer, IPP or an EPC? What is their core function?
Stefano (39:50) We are a developer. So we originate and develop projects up to ready to build. And when we get to ready to build, also call it a light IPP. So we get a share of the project, depending on the country and the deal we have in place. A little bit like SolarSentry at the time with Encavis, which was a very positive and successful ⁓
sort of partnership, know, and Cavist would finance the project so a century of the asset at the end. ⁓ Something like that. So call it a light IPP. Okay. Probably that’s the best definition you can give to Innovo today.
Vikram (40:38) Fantastic. And you’re in a good position to work as a developer because you’ve had hands-on APC experience yourself from the start to finish. ⁓ You know what’s required, you know, especially your ideas about developing a digital twin. So there’s some kind of traceability, tracking, planning, you know, it’s something way ahead of what normally goes on when there isn’t even a design until the APC contract signed.
and everyone just runs like crazy and then you hope that you end up with something in the end. in terms of the future of autovoltaics and you you’re a very talented engineer as well. Do you have some ideas about you know in terms of module technology, n-types or p-types? What would be your ideal solar farm in the future?
Stefano (41:28) What I like about Solar is the modularity of it. Okay. So I’m a fan of string inverter, no need to hide. It’s definitely my preferred choice for many reasons. It’s modular, but it’s also, it opens up a series of opportunities ⁓ on site management and SCADA and O ⁓
which you can’t have on a central inverter, ⁓ which for me, think, for what I told you before, the digitalization, digital twin, thinking of this solar power plant embedded in the system, communicating to the rest of the different items of the system, for me, stringing in on design. Still, I’ve designed and I designed something with central inverters sometimes also to diversify
a little bit also the risk of doing always the same thing. ⁓ Module-wise, can see also talking to suppliers, to module suppliers, I can see they were really bad in the future on efficiency. you might expect, I think we’ve reached the peak.
in terms of dimension, I don’t think we will go any bigger than that, or probably not much bigger. If you think of the modules we were installing in Black VEde and look at some of the 700 W peak modules on the market now, there is just double the dimensions. I don’t think we will try from that again. I think there will be a lot of work done on the efficiency mostly. But yeah, I like it that it’s modular. ⁓
So, you know, easy design, string inverters, SCADA, asset management. I like that. And one important, one nice thing is probably ⁓ thinking of solar because there’s one big thing. Solar is built on land. Land is mostly agricultural. And so, you know, it’s not either one or the other. There is something called AgriPV.
We actually made the name official when in the work stream with Solar Power Europe back in 2018, 2019. I was in Solar Century at the time. We defined that name. We defined what AgriPB should be looking like. In Italy, I feel quite confident to say we are very much advanced on definition on AgriPB. We have some technical norms, some guidelines.
and et cetera, it’s a good definition. Again, when you develop because you want to develop and create value, you say, I’m doing a GIGPD, whatever that means. If you do it in a quality way, then it’s not that easy. You really have to think about. So probably one thing that I’m eager to focus on and to learn and to study is structure.
know, structures, how we can adapt mounting structures to agricultural activities. Sometimes, you know, it just means higher structures, sometimes just means wider pitches, but it’s, you know, I don’t believe it’s just that. I believe we can do a lot better than that. So that’s probably the evolution in technology.
in equipment for a solopi, and I’m really focusing at the moment.
Vikram (45:24) In terms of bifacial modules, do you see that having a positive impact on Agri PV? There are people that have 650-watt monofacials, there’s now bifacials in the market. Do you have a view on bifacial modules?
Stefano (45:38) It’s a win-win in any type of PV. The cost is almost the same now, so there’s no brainer. In agriculture especially, because the real downside, which is advertised against ugly PV, is the shading created by the modules. Obviously, with a bifacial, you reduce a little bit of that shading compared to a monofacial.
which is completely blocking light. And at the same time, agriculture ⁓ is a good way to control an important parameter, which is the albedo. So it’s a win-win. So you can actually improve and optimize crop selection also based on the reflection of the light and so improve your yield. It’s a win-win. You need to start…
Vikram (46:35) Albedo is the reflected light power generator from the reflected light, right?
Stefano (46:41) Yeah, what gets reflected for whatever the light hits on the ground. So if you have a very nice and dry British grass, then you will have a very high albedo or snow has a very high albedo, water has the worst albedo or anything that is wet has a worse albedo. you can play with that and improve both sides.
Vikram (47:11) Fantastic. We’re coming towards the end of our conversation. Before we finish, I want to get your view on the market penetration of PV in the Italian market, in the British market, in Spain. What percentage of energy do you think can be provided by solar power by itself? Do you have some ideas about DC coupling or AC coupling of batteries with solar?
Stefano (47:38) I think the two questions are very much related because, you know, getting an understanding of the second question on coupled batteries will give you also a specific answer for the first question. So how much can we penetrate solar into the energy mix? They’re very much dependent. You can, without battery storage, can penetrate, solar can penetrate the market up to a certain point because otherwise…
It just is not feasible for the grid. So if you look at the targets 54, 55 in Europe or all the targets that you see, it’s literally impossible to do without battery storage. I think solar can power up to 60, 70 % of the energy mix at regime. So in 10 years, probably time.
But before we need to make sure that the energy can flow to the grid and that we don’t sacrifice the grid. so that’s where battery storage comes in. Battery storage is an amazing market today because it’s determined to be the market of the next five to 10 years, but still is not clear. So you see a lot of wild investment not regulated.
And that’s very interesting. DC, we don’t have much DC coupling today in Italy, for example, in the horizon because Terna, the TSO doesn’t care about specifically about a flat curve of energy. They much rather prefer having a battery storage standalone that you give to them. So you sign a CPA, a capacity purchase agreement, and they can manage that capacity to adjust the grid. And so they tell you,
with solar, we don’t care. Do it the way you like. The energy production curve, it’s whatever you like. But you need to give me storage so that I can control that. AC coupling could be interesting to look at today to avoid curtailment for PV sites in Italy, because essentially the grid might not be able to take up all your power. So my curtail you.
And that’s where you might benefit from, know, basic coupled battery storage. But it’s not necessarily economically feasible, you know, because it has a cost and it’s not absorbed by the PV because it’s only the PV that you have to look at as a revenue.
Vikram (50:23) Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. So batteries are very important for ⁓ lot of change with the TSO or transmission system operator in the UK as well. I think parts of the national grid might have been nationalised by the government to speed up the national significant infrastructure projects. So there’s more than 19 gigawatt peak in the planning documents now and there’s even one gigawatt peak solar farms being planned. So if you think about working back in the UK, know, the times could get
very, very interesting, but I’ve certainly enjoyed this conversation, Stefano, and I will listen again to ⁓ your comments and think deeply about it and see how this determines the future for us. so with that, Stefano, thank you very much for joining us today and I hope to talk to you again soon.
Stefano (51:12) Thank you very much. This was a very, very nice opportunity to talk about all the interesting topics of this amazing industry. Thank you very much.
Vikram (51:23) Perfect, thanks Stefano.
Stefano (51:25) Speak soon, bye.
Vikram (00:00) Welcome to another podcast, another episode of the future of solar photovoltaics. Today I’m very excited to have Mr Clive Cosby join us from EDF as a senior project manager who I’ve known from 2014 going back to Canada farm. But the most exciting time was during Shotwick solar farm, which was 72 megawatt peak. The biggest solar farm to be constructed ever at the time. Received a letter from
from the investor witnessed by David Cameron and Xi Jinping. Welcome Clive.
Clive (00:35) Vikram, good to see you again. It’s been good to be, in touch with you and kept in contact over the years. And yeah, looking forward to talking about my experience of delivering, as you say, some of the biggest projects in the country and elsewhere.
Vikram (00:51) Right, as I said on earlier episodes, people are what make this industry great and the future of solar photovoltaics cannot be defined without the people that make this industry possible. Are you able to tell us a bit about your background, what you studied, where you come from?
Clive (01:08) Sure, sure. Yeah, and I think that’s a big influence over where I’ve gone in life and what I’ve done and my experience that I bring to projects. ⁓ I grew up on a farm, which was an idyllic upbringing in South Devon, a long line of family ⁓ farmers for generations. So we had a lot of freedom. We were out and about in nature all the time. But I also saw that with my parents, that there was a lot of work to be done. There was a lot of delivery responsibility.
You have to look after the animals, you have to tend to the crops, otherwise you don’t get the yields, you don’t get the return. So it’s very much a performance focus. I can remember when I was very young, a winter probably in the early 80s where it snowed and it was snowing hard. ⁓ And dad stayed up all night keeping the track to the farm open so that the milk lorry could come in in the morning to take the milk, otherwise it would all be…
it would all go to waste and there wouldn’t be any income. So it was a very real environment to grow up in and ⁓ a good experience for me in life. And after that, big influences for me were getting into sailing as a passion, as a sport, as something that I loved and enjoyed. And I sought that after university, after a few years of working in sales, actually. And I had the opportunity to get into sailing as a profession.
I learnt a lot about working with people, ⁓ leading people, communicating with people. I sailed with famous people, whatever that means, celebrities, some captains of industry, some very, very good ⁓ decorated sailors, ⁓ and a lot of very ordinary people that wanted to go sailing. And I learnt how to work with and coach and motivate people to get the best out of them.
I’ve often said to people in the past that when you’re in the middle of an ocean, unless you’ve sorted out your crew, you’ve organized and prepared and planned your boat and your passage, and you’ve addressed all of those minor issues that you might have with people with conflict on board. It’s going to be a pretty unpleasant journey, a pretty unpleasant passage. So there’s a lot of drilling down into the bottom of things, no stone unturned, and taking full responsibility for.
everything that you you oversee and need to deliver.
Vikram (03:35) Fantastic. what drew you to the solar industry? How did sailing lead to a career transition into solar?
Clive (03:42) It was a direct, a direct segue, I guess you’d say. one of the last boats that I worked on professionally, ⁓ a beautiful 40 meter classic ⁓ in the Mediterranean about, well, 10 years ago now, more than 10 years ago. And I met the director of a, of a solar business and was talking about how, you know, I loved my job and what I did, but I had a family at home and
The lifestyle took me away a lot, a lot of traveling, a lot of being away. When you’re on a boat, that’s your, it’s a lifestyle job, right? You don’t get to choose when you go home and when you have holiday, when you have breaks. So I was missing out on a lot of things at home and wanted to get more of a quote, normal job at home. And he was very kind to give me an opportunity. And that’s how I came to start at BSR. And I often said that if I’d have applied for that job, then
I may not have got it, but because he saw me in a different context and a different industry, he appreciated the transferable skills, the experience and knowledge that I could bring. And at BSR at that time, ⁓ was a great place to be, a lot of energy, a lot of good people. ⁓ 2014, when I started, was just when things were kind of peaking at the sort of the maximum on that tariff roller coaster that we were on. And ⁓ I was given a
huge platform to go and deliver projects very very quickly.
Vikram (05:15) I used to love visiting British Solar Renewables or BSR. Even before then they used be known as Solar Power Generation Limited, SBGL. And the reason why I used love visiting BSR was because I’ve grown up in an urban environment in London and I used to get to drive past Stonehenge on the way there. I remember meeting lots of people in shipping container offices and…
Things went absolutely mad. I still haven’t written down all the experiences from that time and BSR wasn’t the only company we working with in that period. In terms of your most memorable project experiences from that period, which one stands out as the most challenging or memorable and what were the key lessons learnt?
Clive (06:00) Yeah, there were a few. ⁓ I guess I’ve not been involved in a massive number of projects, but I have been involved in very significant projects. ⁓ My first solar park, everyone remembers their first one, was ⁓ a project called Canada Farm near Blanford Forum. It was a summer build and during that time, that was relatively unusual because we had this…
Mad Dash to achieve the tariff deadline at the end of March. So we’d go to site generally waiting for developments in technology and the price to be right in January time and have these winter builds to get commissioned and accredited. But we built this project throughout the summer. It was a very dry summer. It was a brilliant site, rectangular project, single field, easy access off a nice tarmac farmer’s drive.
and the ground conditions were superb. You could drive your car around if you needed to. So there was very little constraints and the project went really well. And because it was after that boom to the March of that year, we had a lot of resources available. We had good contractors at the time. We had a lot of our own people who were fairly experienced by that stage, certainly more experienced than me. They’d been building solar projects for a couple of years and BSR had learnt from
building the first project or their first projects really themselves and just figuring out how to do things. So it was a very steep learning curve for me. I’m very grateful to that. That was a fun project. And then moving on from there, we just really, there was a massive step change. That was a nine-meg project, which at the time was really big. I remember having conversations with a contractor about a 20-meg project and
a little bit of head scratching about whether that would even be possible, which is quite funny now looking back seeing how far we’ve come. And then a project came up called Owl’s Hatch. It had been around for quite some years. It was still subject to planning, but grid was there, land agreements were there, procurement was underway. And ⁓ it was a collection of nine fields, co-joined single landowner ⁓ near Herne Bay in Kent.
The planning decision in December was deferred. So then we had this whole project, the biggest project that had ever been built in the country, first 132 connection, first project going above 50 megawatts. And it was all subject to a planning decision, as I recall, on a Thursday evening, the first Thursday of January 2015. And ⁓ late that night, I got a message to say,
we go green light and then the next day and the days following that and the weeks and months were just some incredible experience actually. ⁓ As I say, the steepest learning curve ever. We had contractors on site within days. Everything had been hinged upon this planning decision because if we didn’t get it, then we would have to have reevaluated as to whether the project would have been possible in that tariff window. The project succeeded really
because we had some incredible people, some personalities involved, some great experience, some brilliant contractors that we brought in who really delivered in very challenging conditions and pulled together to make it happen. So that was a real memorable project. I would say that I always felt like we were slightly behind the curve. I wasn’t fully on top of everything that was happening in the way that I would have liked to have been. We were delivering.
safely as best we could at the time. You have to think the industry was different then. Maybe it was a little bit more cowboy to a certain extent. Things have moved on a long, long way since then. But that lessons that I learned in that project and that winter set me up for some great projects that followed.
Vikram (10:03) In terms of successful collaboration with experienced contractors, if you forget about the negatives and focus only on the positives, who did you like working with in your time at Canada and such?
Clive (10:16) ⁓ Well, there was a, and still is, I’m sure, ⁓ a great contractor ⁓ called Sphere, who those guys were involved from the beginning. I think with BSR, they brought a huge amount of knowledge and professionalism. I think that the quality standards that they adhered to, and BSR did as well in general, think, is, you know, there are simpler, quicker and cheaper ways of doing things very often. ⁓
And I talk about that a lot now with projects that I work in. Obviously program and price is very important, but fundamentally, if you don’t get the quality right, if you don’t get the engineering right, your program, your cost is out the window anyway, because your project will not perform. But I think probably in those days, there was quite a few projects that were short-termist in the way that they were contracted. There were contractors that wanted to slam it in very quickly, get paid and moved on.
I like to think that we used to take a more long-term approach because we were integrated as a director, as a developer, ⁓ EPC, and then O operator. So we had a longer term view. So I think definitely Sphere and then with Al’s Hatch, Robinson Lawler did an incredible job from a standing start in terms of their experience in the industry. And now they’re involved as with Sphere with many.
many projects and have a huge amount of experience, but their guys really grafted in very challenging conditions. It was a very wet Q1 that year. There was a lot of mud to deal with. ⁓ There were a lot of opportunities where they could have, ⁓ how would I say, perhaps quite reasonably have complained and not fulfilled their contract, but they didn’t. They made it happen and we got there, we got commissioned.
Vikram (12:12) I have lot of respect for Sphere and Robinson and Lula. I haven’t got a bad word to say about them. But if you contrast that period with SPGL and solar renewables and at the same time we had Sol Sentry and Wurzel and several others constructing projects. You know, now if you fast forward to 2023, you know, we seem to not be able to build anything. know, with HS2 there’s a complete debacle as one of the most expensive failures on earth. You know, what was
different about BSR and your team at the time that you were developing and installing so many solar farms? What is it more than 500 megawatts that BSR have accomplished since?
Clive (12:52) I’m sure it is, yeah, over the years. And things have changed a lot ⁓ since ⁓ the end of that tariff era. It got the industry to where it needed to be, but it didn’t quite bridge the gap to parity that was always spoken about as where we needed the economics to be to make projects work. So there has been this lull-less void, and we’re just getting back up to speed now. The goalposts have moved a lot. We’re up to hundreds of megawatts now of projects.
So yeah, there’s been a significant step there. I think what I would say is that we learned, and it was before my time to be honest, they learned from day one of how is this possible? How can we do this? How does this work? The early projects, they were using Grundamatt piles, which are sort of driven in within ⁓ an air compressor, like tapping them in and then filled with
filled with cement and then angle structure put in it. All the structure for the site was basically handmade by the guys who were cutting it on site. A lot of the specification of the components was all that they knew at the time, but they got the job done. And because they learned how to do it at that smaller scale, then stepping up to five meg, nine meg, 20 meg, 50 meg sites, they learned how to do it. And I always think that it became like a…
production line really. So every time a new development opportunity came in, everyone knew their task, everyone knew their job, everyone knew the decision points and how we like to operate. ⁓ we delivered and delivered a lot of projects and it was a really great place to be. mean, of course, it wasn’t perfect. Nothing ever is, but it was pretty much as good as it gets. And I think there were quite a few other developer EPCs at that time that had that same level of it.
level of experience to deliver so effectively.
Vikram (14:48) Well, I’m quite proud of what we’ve achieved. In the UK, there’s 9 gigawatts of solar installed on large scale, probably 13 to 15 gigawatts if you include commercial. And domestic, so much so that in almost 12 years of continuity, my team has built up a Google Maps database which plots every single solar farm that’s been installed, including the 2.5 gig that we’ve supplied to.
And it always makes me think with everything that we’ve been through with Brexit, with the lockdowns, with the Ukraine war, now issues in the Middle East with Israel and Palestine, know. And now there’s this huge development, this 19 gigawatt peak in development, but not a lot going into construction since 2017. Can you point to a magic ingredient? What was special about BSR that, you know, despite making mistakes, you know,
they could construct so much in such little time.
Clive (15:48) Yeah, we just had this great team that could deliver. We had great contractors who knew and trusted us. I think there was a lot done on trust. A lot of contracts were on trust at that stage that we had existing relationships. So now with projects that I’m looking at, big projects, interesting projects, you know, that trust is the glue that binds relationships, right? And when you’ve delivered a project, then you know how to do it again. I’ve brought in a few.
colleagues from that time back into where I’m at at the moment. they come in, they sit down, you press play, you know how to work, you know how to operate, you know how to deliver. ⁓ So yeah, it was a ⁓ great team, great leadership. The finances were there. Of course, the sector was being supported at the time. And there was this big excitement actually. And it was pioneering. We were learning how to do things. We were working out whether we wanted
our central inverters on concrete foundations or pile foundations. We figured that pile foundations were quicker, simpler, faster, less site risk to install. We figured out which was the best track way to use to be able to get our deliveries around site. So we’re delivering all of our materials as much as we could right into site within 100 meters or so of where it’s being installed. So you’re reducing the second handling, the logistics, because we had this, we had a cliff edge. We had the end of March deadline and we had to be commissioned
by that time and we would be independently checked and tested and verified by Ofgem and we had to be ready for that.
Vikram (17:30) I remember there was a great and immense rivalry at the time. Obviously Solar Century were the pioneers, know, this was supposed to be the Solar Century and I remember being in Waterloo talking to them about ⁓ SADC Solar Farm 50 megawatt peak and it was all over the news on Solar Power Portal. It’s a blog that still exists.
where I think BeElectric may have developed Rorten Solar Farm and they wanted to sell or find an EPC. I don’t really understand the confidential dynamics on how these things work. And SoulCentury, there was this talk in the office that they’re competing to win this Rorten Solar Farm from BSR. So BSR somehow land that project, RF Linum’s happening at the same sort of time period. And I remember saying very clearly in the SoulCentury office,
Don’t worry about Roughton because they’re already on site at Shotwick Solar Farm. So it was an immense period and before we talk about Shotwick, what were the sort of learning experiences from Al’s Hatch? It’s in the same sort of ballpark or area as Cleve Hill Solar Farm may have been known as Project Fortress at some point. In terms of flooding and ground conditions, what did you learn or take away from the experience at Al’s Hatch?
in terms of the specifics of the ground conditions, propensity of flooding, working in the mud.
Clive (18:54) Yeah, ⁓
I think we just, have to be thinking on your feet. You have to be ⁓ dynamic in the way that you manage. You need a lot of contingency. We had a plan with the trackway company that they were going to put in kilometers of trackway for us. On the second week, on a Thursday morning, the MD of the business was in my office before seven o’clock, before I got there on a busy construction day towards the beginning of the build of a solar park.
to tell me that they could not fulfill the order that we placed with them. ⁓ So we had to move. We had to find alternative trackway. We had to start importing stone and build roads so that we could get around the fields. So when you have cojo and co-located fields, you have these pinch points where you’re going through, you know, where were hedges or trackways to access through gates. And when it’s raining and wet and muddy, there’s a lot of topsoil, a lot of vehicle movements. The conditions for moving around can be incredibly challenging.
So you need a lot of motivated staff, you need a lot of vehicles and a decent transport plan of how you’re going to achieve this. We began to realize partway through that project, maybe into the second month, that we couldn’t move the modules around site quick enough because we couldn’t drive the ⁓ solar trucks delivering the modules around the site. So they came into a separate entrance, as I remember. We used to offload three pallets.
as part of our testing protocol. So one got tested, depending on how they performed, the other two might get tested. Worst case, of course, that whole delivery container could get returned to the factory. So we’re documenting the quality of the modules and how they’re arriving at site in terms of the performance. But we couldn’t get them into the field quick enough because they then had to be moved on by tractor and trailer. And there was only
so much room on the roadways during the day. So we started running 24 seven. So we brought in a new site manager and a new team to just be running out modules, lacing them out around the clock. And without that, we would not have delivered on time. So it’s having the resource and the kind of just being in touch with what’s going on really having a good team around you who aren’t afraid to put their hand up and.
share their concerns. It’s bringing in people that have got knowledge and experience, but also just learning yourself. And I’d always say to the team, what concerns you? What’s on your mind? You know, in the evening when you’re going to bed, what’s the thing that you’re thinking about that is just concerning you and causing you anxiety? Because that’s what we need to deal with. And I’ve also said that, you know, when we’re building at that kind of pace, we were building
You know, probably we built in 10 weeks that project by the time we got mobilized to site 50 megs, which at the time was quite impressive. ⁓ and the sort of pace that, you know, now we could probably easily achieve and contracts are used to, ⁓ delivering, but we need lots of long, boring, productive days. We don’t need any excitement, any dramas. We just need that flatline productivity to get the job done.
Vikram (22:14) Absolutely and I remember then moving on to Shopwick Solar Farm in Wrexham near the paper mill. I remember being disheartened over Christmas because I thought the project was dead, nothing’s going to happen and know, and interestingly it raised the point about team dynamic and chemistry because you know, I’ve been working for Studer Cables in Switzerland, formerly owned by Leoni, a 5 billion euro PLC existing for almost 500 years.
you know, very corporate and but we had some great backers and we always had an amazing impression of BSR, especially I think Drive Wellstone Henge helped and factory visits helped and now they reflect a lot on remote working and trying to recover that some sort of team dynamism. You know, I remember losing all hope on Shotwick and suddenly we receive a phone call from a Mr. Simon Ng saying
You know, the founder of BSR has been to 10 Downing Street and you’ll get a letter from the Chinese government and you know, can you make two million pounds worth of stock without any guarantees? And you know, I had no hope and I sent this really fancy letter to our board of directors, especially to Mr. Christoph Studer and I received an email back saying we’ve started production. You know, this was, I think, a few weeks before Grid Connection, know, but we managed to get this somehow. You know, I remember
making it up as I go along in terms of the cable schedule because there just wasn’t enough time and luckily we were within 99 % of what was required. had two driver teams driving 24-7 to deliver to site. We had reports that the cables were arriving still warm from the production line. That’s how quick we were working. So enter the Chinese and you build the biggest solar farm in the country and you don’t want to slow down there. It seems then…
You know, your travels or your ambition took you to Myanmar. Are able to tell us a little bit more about that? And especially China Triumph Engineering. Who are these guys? I remember visiting them in Shanghai, but still haven’t recovered from that period.
Clive (24:22) Well, think one of the things at BSR was ⁓ there was the cycles driven by the tariffs. There were cycles in terms of funding as well. then there was a relationship that developed with WeLink, CTIEC. So WeLink are the project management sort of TA arm of ⁓ CTIEC, ⁓ China Triumph International Engineering Company, large EPC. They have a module. ⁓
manufacturers part of the group as well. They came in and gave us the ability to deliver Shotwick, but also Swindon solar park that you mentioned earlier. that was next level to be honest, because we’d learned so much from that previous ⁓ winter and BSR actually only came across that project. I understand at the solar event at Birmingham NEC probably October time, we were on site.
In January, having redesigned the park, looked at it ⁓ in a number of ways. The EPC that were engaged or the developer, they’d looked at having a compound on the site and then building themselves out. And I just thought, how on are you going to do that in that time scale? So we negotiated some land and built a compound outside of the footprint. meant that we had to put in some high pressure gas pipe crossings.
which were complicated and expensive, but it just de-risked the project massively. We put in a new logistics plan and different gateways and different access to sites so that this time we actually could get all of our deliveries, all of our structure and modules and cable trucks into the field and unloading as we planned to do previously at Owl’s Hatch. And it ran like clockwork really. I think we were able to complete with a brilliant team that joined us to deliver on the experience we had.
just a field factory that flowed from one end to the other. We had some great contractors, in particular Tech Energy and Eleco 99 who delivered on the LV side and just really, really made it happen. And that project really is probably one of my proudest and the greatest pleasure to have delivered.
And following that, I realized that there were less opportunities in the UK. Perhaps that was the biggest thing that was going to be delivered for some period of time. And I was able to take an opportunity with, with WeLink to work with them with CTIC to deliver in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma. ⁓ It’s a country, very under or less developed country in Southeast Asia between Thailand and Bangladesh. And there was a
project there that they were involved with to build a 200 megawatt ⁓ solar plant in that country, the first phase of which would be 50 megawatts, when really there was nothing there. There was no solar infrastructure. So it was a familiar subject, but really extraordinary and unfamiliar circumstances to be in.
Vikram (27:25) But I remember receiving some, know, solar is what we’re here to talk about, but you know, Myanmar, know, with everything that’s happening in that part of the world, the exotic environment, know, the issues with the genocide, you know. I remember receiving some great photographs from you about the train journeys, you know. How was it like getting to site and can you tell us a bit more about the environment that you experienced?
Clive (27:49) Yeah, I mean, it was fascinating. It was extraordinary. mean, one of the first things you notice, you’re turning up for meetings in Yangon, which is the former capital, but the biggest city in the south, the port in the south, previously known as Rangin. And outside of all of the building, there’s a generator. And you’d be in a meeting, like in a room like this, and all the lights would go out. And the first time it happens, you’re a little bit concerned about what’s going on. But no one panics. They’ll sit there for a few seconds.
someone starts the generator or automatically kicks in and the lights come back on. they’re having blackouts and brownouts all the time. They have a lot of grid issues. The country’s developing and growing massively, but most of the population live a very much subsistence, humble life. And this project was right in the middle of the country. this land was given to the project. I’m not quite sure how, but it was virgin land. You could imagine that really no one had ever been there.
They first had to go in and cut down all the bushes and the trees and the shrubs in this area. You can still see the footprint of it actually on Google Earth. land is running with little rivulets and little valleys and ⁓ also a good number of snakes as well. you have to be careful where you trot. I always went everywhere with a local who you felt would help preserve your safety.
Vikram (29:09) Some of worrying things I’ve read about Myanmar besides the genocide which we won’t go into is as of the scope of our podcast. I’ve always had a positive impression of Buddhism. I’m not a particularly religious person. I come from a Hindu Punjabi background. I’ve been fascinated by the teachings of Buddhism. Myanmar, remember reading, is almost like an extremist Buddhist country. What was your interaction? What was your experience of Buddhism while you were there?
Clive (29:36) Yeah, it’s hard to say because this was happening whilst we were there and we became increasingly aware of it and had some conversations with ⁓ people that operated on the developer side. So we had a ⁓ Thai-Burmese developer, a Chinese funder, and we linked. I was British, but I Italian, Spanish, Irish, Bulgarians, you know, I probably the only
⁓ So it’s a real cosmopolitan mix. But it was really quite clear that the of the contempt that was felt, you know, really strong, even from people that were, you know, Western educated, but were Burmese from Myanmar. And that was quite unsettling. ⁓ So yeah, it’s difficult to dwell on that really because
At the lowest ground level, the people we worked with, they were wonderful people and you had some incredible experiences. They were so kind and generous and keen to be involved in the project and excited about it. And yet within their country, under their leadership, there was this ⁓ genocide happening, not more than a few hundred miles from where we were operating. And I think that
For that and some other reasons that it was my time to bow out, I found a team who came in, mainly South Africans, and they came in and delivered that project all the way through to completion.
Vikram (31:20) Fantastic and then you went on to Portugal straight after that.
Clive (31:23) Yeah, so WeLink had a lot of projects, a lot of interest in different places, offices in Milan, Barcelona, worked there quite a bit. ⁓ We built ⁓ some significant projects in Portugal, 46 meg, 220-odd megawatt sites, right in probably what is some of the highest ⁓ rates of irradiance in Europe, in the middle of the Algarve, ⁓ inland, in the centre.
50 Ks in from the coast, irradiance really high, land pretty cheap, but yeah, some incredible sites. ⁓ The Solara Quattro project has been renamed now. ⁓ very interesting land conditions. So very rural, a lot of unused farmland, ⁓ a lot of little communities and villages where, you know, there’s
probably, I don’t know, less than 50 % occupancy and the people that live there as the older generation, the older community, maybe there’s still a cafe, maybe there’s still a shop there. So a very interesting way of life, but very much underfunded, under-resourced. And we built on land that was ⁓ not especially well-suited to solar, apart from the irradiance. So quite challenging sites, very undulating terrain, rocky. So all of the piling had to be.
pre-drilled, all of the trenches had to be cut with a special machine. You couldn’t just dig with an excavator in the way that we’re used to. But again, it got delivered and it’s delivering a lot of green energy down there.
Vikram (33:00) So now you’re back in the UK working for probably one of largest energy companies in the world with Energy Day France or EDF. Yeah. And before that you had a small stint at Cleve Hill Solar Farm. Yeah. With Quinnbrook, you know. What made you want to come back to dark and miserable UK after all these exotic jungle experiences and…
Clive (33:24) Yeah, it’s probably maybe similar to before when I was sailing, it sort of takes you away. And ⁓ I love traveling and interacting with people in different countries and different cultures and different experiences. That’s worth a lot more to me than a regular nine to five for the next decade or so. So they were really rich experiences. as I say, sort of familiar subject matter, but different circumstances and work with some good people there, did some good work. But then yes,
Cleve Hill came up as an opportunity to come back ⁓ and work in the UK. It had always been there. I think even since the days of being involved with Al’s Hatch, Cleve was mentioned. It was being developed at that stage. It was a long way off and just seemed crazy that we were ever going to be building something that big. So yeah, the opportunity to work on that was very enticing.
And it was a good project. It’s under construction now. It’s underway. It’s really very much pioneering. And now with EDF similar. So Longfield is consented now, 400 megawatts. So similar, but just a bit bigger than Cleave. We’re working on going to tender. We’re looking at all the pre-construction elements of that project to kind of in a way.
you know, deliver like we did at Shotwick, I think in my mind, that’s the way that I see it. We learnt in many different projects, different places, bringing together and building a team to deliver this project out effectively, because this is the new normal. We’re talking to EPCs, going towards this tendering process, and it’s a big step, and we need to work out, you know, the most efficient way to deliver these projects, because it’s all about maintaining quality, but…
focusing on price and program and the quicker we can get the project built, the distance between starting to spend money and getting that generation, that revenue return ⁓ is key. And we’re tying in with National Grid now. So there’s some big challenges there. We’re connecting at 400. They’re building a substation. We’re building a substation. So it’s really next level.
Vikram (35:39) 400,000 volts right? 400 kV transmission voltage. To put things in perspective it seems like wherever there’s a big project you seem to be there. Whether it’s a war zone or a muddy field in England or Wales and you know if we look at context for a second know Shotwick was the largest solar farm ever built in the UK. 72 megawatt peak. It’s only been eclipsed by Land Wern which is only a couple of megawatts more.
Clive (35:41) Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Vikram (36:08) But Cleve Hill’s 300 megawatt peak more than Shotwick in a period where we’ve got labour shortages, where people have had mental health challenges with remote working and lots of people, they talk about the great retirement and so on. And so you’ve had some involvement with that. then Longfield is even bigger, it’s 400 or 500 megawatt peak. So what do you see on these sites?
The subject or the goal here is the future of solar photovoltaics. Do you see solar competing with food?
Clive (36:45) Well, it’s a big site and there’s certainly a lot of efficiencies in putting that size and that scale. I’ve been involved with rooftops before and they’ve got their place as well. on this project, it’s one landowner. So it’s one single agreement, which brings efficiencies, ⁓ makes it far simpler in many regards. There is the consenting process to go through. So once you move above 49.9,
AC export, it goes away from the local planners in terms of the ⁓ consenting or the approval. So it has to go through the sector of state ⁓ to be consented to become ⁓ an NSIP, a nationally significant infrastructure project, which gives you certain privileges and rights, but also responsibilities. now going through the stage of discharging all of those conditions. So proving to the local planners that we are compliant and how we will comply.
There’s a lot more than we ever used to do in terms of getting this to site and getting it to be realized in terms of environmental, ecological considerations, traffic considerations, considerations with regard to neighbors and the wider community on the project. There’s looking at managing the soil, the ground conditions ⁓ as well, committing to enhancing the community.
the environment, giving employment opportunities as well. So it is the future. It is on currently farmed land. It will return to be farmed land. ⁓ For a period of time, it will be a solar park. The land will get the opportunity to regenerate to an extent. During that time, it is possible to bother with looks and moves to grow crops. You can graze as well.
around as we’ve been doing on many many parks.
Vikram (38:43) What is the interaction with the landowners or the farmers or the people that work there? you know, travel, the nature of our jobs means we travel a lot, we talk on the phone a lot, we kill time on the road sometimes. And what made me feel… ⁓
interested was you you mentioned you had chats with a farmer at cleave hill you know you said good luck with the flooding and you mentioned there were potatoes in longfield you know what is your view from from the farmers perspective why are they giving up their farming careers to to farm energy now
Clive (39:15) I suppose a lot of it is probably economics, right? It’s economic stability for them, isn’t it, as like an income. also, there’s a need, there’s a demand, right? We need to clean up our energy supply chain. Energy demand is increasing. We need to diversify it. We need to get away from ⁓ oil, gas, fossil fuels as much as we can. I’m sure that they’ll always play a part. But we have this opportunity with these big projects to
put a large part of our infrastructure over to renewable energy. So a project like this and Cleave and others that we’re developing, where you’ve got a significant amount of solar connected with significant battery storage as well, can be part of the solution for giving us renewable energy and decreasing our reliance upon fossil fuel.
Vikram (40:08) So Longfield and Cleaver, they’re nationally significant infrastructure projects, referred to as NSIPs sometimes. A lot of this is public information. is in the public interest to go look at the documents, to question things. I remember reading the grid connection for Longfield was delayed to October 28, Constructors starting at 25. And now as we come towards the end of our podcast, know…
We talk about the future. Where do you see we will be this time next year or in 2028? What do you think will happen eventually at this site?
Clive (40:45) Yeah, mean there’s a long way, it’s not my area to be honest, but there’s a long way for the grid to go to develop in terms of supporting these projects. So a lot of upgrade works are needed for that. As I say, think Solr could be part of the solution. I’ve been working in Solr now for 10 years and I think as Al Gore, who said in The Inconvenient Truth that it’s
very hard to convince somebody of the truth when their livelihood depends upon it. He was, course, talking about the fossil fuel industry and talking about the end ⁓ of that era and the need to progress beyond it. I’m not entirely blinded by solar. I think there are other opportunities out there. Of course, there’s wind. One area that I personally feel, probably because of my background and upbringing and passion for things in the marine environment, is tidal energy.
You if you think about a renewable energy source that you can model 24 7 infinitely that it’s always flowing right so four times a day round round our shores it changes direction so you’ve got this little period but somewhere else you’ll still be potentially able to generate there are there are companies that are in that sector now that are coming up with solutions and of course the argument always is that it’s so expensive the engineering challenges that we have but probably if you went back 25 30 years and said we’re going to be putting.
wind turbines offshore off the coast and connecting them into our grid infrastructure. People said, you’re crazy. That’s going to cost too much. That’s going to be too complicated from an engineering point of view. now let’s change those in future developments for tidal turbines and see where we can go. And if there were to be more investment in that, and then that would be 24-7 providing us with energy solutions.
Vikram (42:29) And you mentioned before balancing ethics with ambition, you know, I won’t go too much into that, you know. There’s enormous politics with energy. are in the middle of an energy war. In the future, we’ve got to know what will happen with hydrogen, with tidal, working under seawater. You know, there’s also the big C word China, you know, they’ve incentivized and supported this industry and spent billions, hundreds of billions of pounds. We’re at module prices of less than 18 cents a watt and potentially 40 gigawatt peak in stock.
in Europe. know, China has driven down prices for solar panels in the same way as semiconductors for computer chips in the past. So it seems to be following the same sort of pattern. in terms of your advice for people that are potentially listening to this podcast, who may be interested in contributing to sustainable practices or pursuing a career in renewable energy, what would be your advice for them? How can they get into solar and get to build the biggest projects like you have?
Clive (43:28) Well, I suppose get involved. I’ve said to younger people before, you know, if you’ve got an interest, I think one area to get into is engineering. I don’t have that background. I’ve got a degree in surveying, which is very useful, but I don’t have a technical background and knowledge. So I’ve seen a lot of very successful people who’ve got that basic understanding through their studies. So electrical, technical engineering, there’s huge opportunities. If you look at the
giant leaps that we’re taking in terms of technology as we move forward and that will surely continue. I think other areas as well that I see, I just think that people are so important to everything that we do. Like you say, one of your passions for being involved, reasons for being involved is the people and the relationships that you can develop and you enjoy that. People make it happen. Without people, no matter how far AI goes,
You know we need people to deliver these projects and make things happen so it’s about you know learning how to develop and foster those relationships for me some my experience that I’ve had it’s about learning how to put people first about how to encourage and facilitate autonomy to let them thrive to be able to make decisions to be able to make mistakes but learn to develop this independence and interdependence to be able to deliver these great projects in a really
successful way. mean, I’ve found it just really thrilling in the past to be involved in projects to just let things go. I probably learned that very much from being, you if you think about being offshore, and I was very often the only professional on board the boat and I have a crew of up to 18 people. If I’m crossing an ocean, I’ve got to be able to sleep at some point. And you’ve got to be able to trust the people that are on the boat to make the right decisions and to wake you up or to take a course of action.
Otherwise, you’re not going to sleep and that’s not sustainable. So that’s where I encourage people to go and get involved, take responsibility for what’s happening, the state of our planet and see opportunities of what we can do in the future.
Vikram (45:34) It seems like lot of farmers and sailors, know, know Nick Keeler at Solar Southwest, he’s in New Zealand now, he’s an enthusiastic sailor as well, so, you know, I got excited to get into this industry because you get to meet some exciting people, you get out of your urban bubble and you do other things. But also at heart, you know, some people call me the cable guy, but you know, I’m a total nerd at heart and I find it mind-boggling how you can have a semiconductor, a silicon solar cell.
and they shoot electron beams or whatever it is with particle accelerators they remove holes or add holes or add electrons and suddenly shine sunlight at this solar cell and you have electricity. How this works is completely… it gives me tingles. We have the Sun that is producing energy 24 hours a day. It’s still there when the Earth turns.
And instead of splitting the atom, I think we should use the nuclear reactor we already have in the sky. And so I do very much enjoy the technology. And this isn’t a technical discussion, but it’s something that we will come to in the future. In terms of your view on the technology, when you see masses of solar panel in the field, what goes through your mind? How do you see creating energy for you?
Clive (46:55) I mean, yeah, it’s quite impressive actually to look at. I have found one of the greatest things being involved in the project is just looking at that physical transformation and the scale of what we can build and achieve. ⁓ But as I say, it’s just one of the solutions, one of the options for creating greener energy for ourselves. And just when you’re describing there and getting excited about the engineering, I…
always just imagine in my mind that I don’t know what happens, that the sun shines on the module and there’s all these ump-a-lumpas inside that jump around and make all this electricity come out, so I’m not as technical as you.
Vikram (47:32) Fantastic Clive, thanks very much for joining us.
Clive (47:34) No, great to see you again, Vikram. Thank you.
Vikram (00:00.738) Good morning, Guy. We are recording now. This is Vikram again from Ventus Cables and Connectivity. This is our second ever episode of our The Future of Solar Folds and Folds of All Takes podcast. Today joining us from Germany is Mr. Guy Atherton, whom I’ve known for a very long time, perhaps since 2008, before the world went mad with the financial crisis. Guy, welcome.
Guy (00:23.664) Hey, Vikram, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Vikram (00:27.594) So, um, well, what led you to Germany, Guy? That was, that was a bit of a shock for me in the past.
Guy (00:33.228) Crikey, what led me to Germany? Well, that’s probably one of the last parts of the story, but I can tell you what led me to Germany. Very simply, it was my wife who is German and who I met in the UK back in 2010. And we moved over here in 2013. So I think in the beginning, our relationship, Vikram, began in the UK where I worked at Solar Century.
Vikram (00:44.16) Right? Fantastic.
Guy (01:03.268) And I think we met, like you said, first in 2008. So it wasn’t long that we were together in the UK. And then I headed off over to Germany. So.
Vikram (01:14.242) great and you know so solo is all about the people for me you know you have to like what you do and like the people that you work with you know so I’ve been working with studio cable Switzerland before they were known as Leoni for the last 12 years almost now you know and my priority is you know to grow the key account relationships to know who are serious about the future you know so if you want to learn if you if we want our network to learn a bit more about you
Guy (01:31.763) Mm.
Vikram (01:44.083) Tell us a bit more about your background. I remember you telling me you were a farmer’s son in Queensland and Australia before.
Guy (01:49.716) That’s correct. I grew up on the farm. And my dad always said, even when from a young age, don’t be a farmer. So I was told, go to high school, make sure you do well at high school. And then if you can go to uni, no one in my, no one in my immediate family, or my uncle, aunts and uncles had been to uni. I think we had an accountant that was about it. So it was, it was a big deal for us kids to go to uni. Speaking of our whole generation now, you know, that’s
quite normal for people to go to uni, but I think it was a big deal back then. Anyway, so I got off the farm. I went and joined the air force. I was in the air force for two years where I fixed up airplanes and really enjoyed that and then had a chance to go to the university of New South Wales in Sydney and finish an aerospace engineering degree. And yeah, so that’s how I came out of uni with a, in 2002.
Vikram (02:28.983) Wow.
Guy (02:49.596) Um, was probably one of the biggest low points in history for aerospace engineering, there just wasn’t a lot going on. Um, it was before SpaceX, you know, all this exciting stuff with rocket science. It was just after the Airbus three 80 came out. So you had like the sort of big leaps in aviation had been done. And it was just like, okay, we don’t really need aerospace engineers anymore. So I was looking around for a job and, um,
Vikram (02:56.858) Mm-hmm.
Guy (03:17.024) Couldn’t find a job in any anywhere in Australia in any Aspects I was working in bars Which was good fun, but still I needed to do have some kind of career so I was backpacking around the world and I was stopped in London for a few months and Found a job at a small South London roofing company Who or there so it seemed who were doing solar installations? And these were very small solar installations like, you know, one or two kilowatts basically on
You can imagine like a granny’s house or someone or an architect, someone who’s very ecologically aware and wants to do their part and is willing to pay something like, what was it back then? 10,000 pounds per kilowatt, just insane prices. So this was in 2004 and that’s, that’s how I got started. That’s all the century, which at the time was about 20 or 30 people and really just, you know, just getting started.
So that’s how I got into Solr basically.
Vikram (04:20.462) 2004 did you say? Oh wow so It’s going to be 20 years next year KIKI
Guy (04:28.634) Oh you’re right, yeah. Almost 20 years of putting solar panels on roofs or on all sorts of things.
Vikram (04:38.89) Right. And, um, you know, for, for me, um, uh, soul century was very exciting. You know, um, I remember wanting to buy my house in London and wondering if I need to leave or move out into the sticks. And, um, you know, as a hardworking sales guy working for lab cable with the head offices in Stuttgart and, you know, I worked my ass off and, uh, well, promoted to field sales.
And the 2008 financial crisis happened. Everyone just went into shutdown. Honda, BMW Mini, everything just went into shutdown. There’s a construction slowdown, massive, massive construction slowdown, the times of Lehman Brothers and so on. At one point people were talking about how would the company survive and…
Our idea was to look at solar and to look at wind as technology we will need for the future. And I’ve come across this great company called Solar Century and I read the story that this was supposed to be the solar century. And so that’s where I first heard your name and I was trying to get in touch with you going out giving that catalog to Shahid Rishi who was working in your Chesingto warehouse at the time.
Guy (05:50.528) That’s right, yeah.
Vikram (05:52.402) I knew you cared about quality because you were buying from Hoover and Schooner in Switzerland. We had a relationship with Studer even then and we were coming out to you. For me it was really an exciting time then. We were looking at CIS Tower in Manchester, projects in Berlin.
And at the time, you know, there was a company called Silicon Vinniard. They were talking about megawatt solar farms in England and people used to make jokes. You know, they used to say, well, you have solar in England. How is this possible? We can’t even go out and sell calculators with solar cells. You know, no, no one believed that, you know, now we fast forward the clock to 2023. And we’ve had a lot of for the last seven years that, you know, we would have. Nine gigawatts of solar farms, perhaps 13 to 15 gigawatts altogether of PV installed and, and now the UKEI task force.
Guy (06:23.808) Hehehehe
Guy (06:36.725) Yeah.
Vikram (06:39.274) is talking about 70 gigawatts by 2035. You know, there’s of course issues with grid connection that need to be dealt with. Tell us more about your experience of solar sentry. You know, this was when the boom almost started for me personally.
Guy (06:51.924) Yeah. Well, yeah, it’s like, let’s look at 2008. I mean, it’s, it’s an interesting point because yeah, you’re right. That, that was like, you know, the economic downturn. Um, and there was a lot of, uh, uncertainty in the construction industry. Um, but I, I felt like even then in the solar industry, like it still felt like we were on the right track and we were still growing because the module prices were coming down. Um, it was, it was basically getting easier for us to work.
But if you think like what we’re working on back then There were small Systems mainly say residential roof say three to four kilowatts maximum on a on a roof in the UK We had a product for that called C 21 which was an integrated roof tile Which would replace the tiles on the roof or could also be used with slate the slate roof so You know, I think we’re a bit ahead of the curve in that way that we had like a really good
Vikram (07:38.03) Mm-hmm.
Guy (07:51.504) understanding and building integrated PV in those early days. So we’re also doing the first flat roof installations with a, with a system we invented at Solar Sentry. We, we had a, I have to mention as well, we had a very good engineering manager, Jan Muller, and Jan is still working for Solar Sentry, what’s now called Stackcraft, but he’s still there and he’s the director of engineering.
Vikram (08:12.6) Mm-hmm.
Vikram (08:19.072) Mm-hmm.
Guy (08:21.508) He’s a legendary engineer. He’s absolutely focused on quality and making sure that, you know, as much of the project is held up to these standards as possible, but not only internally to SolarCentury, you know, he was instrumental in setting up the MCS in the UK, working to define these standards for what a good quality solar installation should be. And that was all happening around that time. And as far as I know, the MCS standards are still used today. I haven’t worked in…
for a while in the UK, but, you know, these were very important first steps to try and define the quality of what everyone knew was going to be a big industry. But yeah, we were mainly working on commercial roofs. So also working on commercial roofs. So let’s say up like 40, 50 kilowatt on a warehouse or something like that. And that really all changed, I think, with the feed-in tariff.
Vikram (09:00.786) Mm-hmm.
Guy (09:20.448) So I think 2009, 2010, the first feeding tariff in the UK came in and that really changed. That was really a step up in terms of, in getting work done.
Vikram (09:35.174) I must say, you know, I’ve been lucky to work on over two and a half gigawatts of projects, mostly in the UK. And, you know, if you’re in the limelight, you’re working on massive contracts, you know, there’s bound to be, you know, stress and controversy. You know, you have to have courage to take decisions under pressure. So, you know, we don’t want to discuss any confidential, anything that may be sensitive. But at the same time, we want to get to the heart of, you know,
Guy (09:56.085) Yeah.
Vikram (10:05.848) talk about where we’ve been, what we do now, where we think the future might go. In those days, 50 kilowatt rooftops were massive. They were huge things, manufacturing solar panels in South Wales as well, that was also very, very exciting. It was also sharp in Wrexham, they used to produce modules. But there was a period where the industry just headed towards exponential growth trajectory. At which point, without mentioning any names or anything,
Guy (10:30.956) Hmm.
Vikram (10:33.714) sensitive did you realize wow this is these are mega projects you know we’re looking at five megawatts 10 megawatts 20 megawatts you know now we’re in the world of three four hundred five hundred megawatt projects which is still hard to comprehend you know we haven’t got over that year and people are planning gigawatt projects in england believe it or not but at what point did you realize this is massive you know when did you do your first last project
Guy (10:45.397) Yeah.
Guy (10:59.164) Well, yeah, like I said, there was that step change with the feed-in tariff. So with the feed-in tariff, that basically made solar projects financially viable, instead of something that you did for greenwashing, or, you know, let’s call it nicely marketing, or you actually had like, concerns about the environment and wanted to do something for yourself. Or maybe there was some kind of corporate social responsibility for companies.
Vikram (11:22.865) Mm-hmm.
Guy (11:28.8) So these were all reasons before, after the feed-in tariff, you had big financial players going, well, hang on, if we invest X, we can get Y back. And before, there was no return on investment before. It was just a feel-good factor, you know? So suddenly it became a financial product. And the best example, which I was personally involved with, was Octopus, who obviously everyone knows now, but back then was just a very small player.
Vikram (11:39.295) Mm-hmm.
Vikram (11:52.759) Mm-hmm.
Guy (11:59.264) just getting started out making PurePlay renewables investments. And they were working through a project developer called LightSource. And both of them were very small at that point. Let’s say 2009, 2010. And that was, I think the first, like you say, when we noticed that this was happening. So work was for me working with LightSource to build these first round of large scale ground melt projects in the UK in 2010.
Vikram (12:03.531) Yep.
Vikram (12:07.254) Mm-hmm.
Guy (12:27.892) So those were the projects like Wheel Jane, which was a abandoned mine in Cornwall where we placed, I think, one and a half megawatts on top of this mine. There was another project in Cambridgeshire called Wheel Burton, which was five megawatts. At the time, that was the cap of the feeding tariff. So I think it was 4.99 megawatts. And at the time, that was the largest project I’d ever personally worked on.
Vikram (12:36.459) Wow.
Vikram (12:47.32) Mm-hmm.
Guy (12:55.312) And there were things like, we’re then worrying about things like building our own grid connection and, you know, uh, fences and, and these sorts of things, which you’d never had to worry about before when you’re just putting PV on a roof, you know, you show up and put the panels on the roof. And suddenly there was all these other, other aspects we had to take into account, planning permission and, uh, environmental studies and all this sorts of stuff. So yeah, that was, that was the big step. And to be honest, since then, the process hasn’t.
really changed for ground mount? I mean, what we were, the challenges we had then are still the challenges you have now. Planning permission grid connection, getting enough workers to build the thing, quality control, obviously, if you’re installing in the middle of winter in the rain and snow, how do you make sure the cables are being laid correctly, all that sort of thing. So these struggles remain constant to this day.
Vikram (13:51.268) Fantastic, you know of course I started my business Ventus, it was a connectivity registered as Ventus limited in companies in England and Wales in March 2012 and before then I had a year in Honeywell where I tried to get involved with the wind industry, training people to jump out of wind turbines.
I was scared of height and I was a product manager for safety at high and most of my colleagues worked in the SAS or the military at some point. So I had to do it. We had to go ape and everyone went down the easy track and I’d take the hard track. I’m a product manager for safety at height. At the time I remember visiting Siemens regarding London array offshore wind farm. It was supposed to be over 1.2 gigawatts wind farm.
Vikram (14:38.722) wanted to Google company names and the reason why I came up with Ventus is because Ventus means wind in Latin and you know It was available so I registered it and my intention was to go into wind But then I had my eye on the solar industry suddenly the solar is installing more capacity than wind And the period in 2012 was special because it was the year of the London 2012 Olympics You know I worked on the floodlights there as well in the past I’d lap and you know, it was an intense time between March
and November 2012 when I think you’ve advertised that you put on your LinkedIn profile that’s when you left Soul Sentry after eight years and three months. So you know that was a really intense period for me and you know at what point did you decide you need to you know leave Soul Sentry and make the transition to your next challenge?
Guy (15:14.763) Yeah.
Guy (15:29.204) Good question. I don’t, I remember being at Solar Century and I was having, you know, um, uh, I think it was a great time, but like you said, I’ve been there for eight years and when you’ve been somewhere for eight years and you’ve grown with the company and you know, you’re not going to really go any further, you start to think about options and, uh, you know, I’ve, I’ve done a lot of things in life and I’ve, I’ve always been an optimist and I try not to regret anything, but I do think the, I do regret the way I left Solar Century.
Vikram (15:44.383) Mm-hmm.
Guy (15:59.496) because I’ve been there for so long and then I was just like, okay, I’m going to go and do something else. And I feel like in retrospect, I wouldn’t do that again. But anyway, the reason I left was I wanted to go on, basically work for myself, try and do things myself. I also started a limited company and I worked mainly for OST, now part of Rena, and I was doing consultancy and project development. So…
Vikram (16:24.246) Mm-hmm.
Guy (16:28.404) working on planning permissions and good connections in the UK from a technical side, helping developers and project developers and small companies to do that. It was interesting, but also a lot of hard work. Lots of traveling around, lots of away from home. And during that time, I also moved to Germany.
I hadn’t anticipated that the UK was going to be so hot. Basically, I thought the German market would also be good at that time. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the German market had a very big downturn 2013, 2014. So it was a difficult, difficult time. Um, but I was still able to find a job in Germany at BiVar renewable energy. So BiVar then also was quite small. BiVar RE, sorry, was quite small. Um,
Vikram (17:00.718) Mm-hmm.
Vikram (17:06.766) Remember that. Yep, yep.
Vikram (17:22.722) Mm-hmm.
Guy (17:23.772) again, like probably 30 or 40 people in the solar branch. And I was basically brought on as the UK solar project expert to help them to build out their projects in the UK. At that time, they’d only been building in Germany and they wanted to move into the UK market. So I was able to help them with the first rock projects, the carbon credits. And yeah, we built.
20, 30, 40 megawatt projects in the UK. I can’t remember how many, quite a few. Also going up towards 50 megawatts by the end. And that was also another sort of lesson, coming from a UK company, which was very focused on quality and having the best reputation in the business and trying to make sure that they kept that moral high ground and then coming to a German company and…
where you kind of assume that the quality and everything will be at the highest level, but they’re also having to make trade-offs and they’re saying, to be financially viable, we have to do this and this. So, I’m not saying that the quality was lower, it was just like the sort of assumption we all have that Germans are known for quality is more, Germans are better at risk management. Let me put it that way. They’re very aware of the risks of everything and they talk about, and they make sure that they’re.
taking everything into account so but this from my experience not necessarily efficient or Focused on quality, but really risk aware
Vikram (19:03.426) There’s so many things you raise here, you know, I’ve just filled up two pages with things I want to ask you. And obviously I want to keep this episode to a manageable number of minutes, but you know, you mentioned so many things I want to ask you about, like OST was mentioned a lot 2012, 2013 onwards. What does OST stand for? It’s the names of the founders, right?
Guy (19:06.252) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Guy (19:23.988) Yeah, Oli Simon and Oli Soper Simon Turner. That was it. Yeah.
Vikram (19:29.826) Thanks. And now that the arena is good for just our memories to keep a timeline of some description. You mentioned the downturn in the German PV industry. I remember the downturn in the Dutch and Spanish PV industry at the same time in Germany. You know, Conergy, SAG, Wurzel were massive, all of them over 300 million euros turnover. I remember precisely in the credit reports.
Guy (19:43.83) Yeah.
Vikram (19:55.934) I enjoy this time a lot as well because it’s a small industry, there’s a lot of circles and networks everywhere. Bayoua, REWAR, our exclusive distributor for Leone in the UK, they were stocking our PV cables. It was a great time for me because I hardly lived in London in the past. I did work a lot in Hampshire and London for LAB, but when I was visiting Bayoua on the west coast of Wales, I can never pronounce the name of the town, it’s McLeancliffe.
Guy (20:02.197) Mm.
Vikram (20:25.782) And it’s how I want to be murdered. Yeah. So I remember this time, you know, driving past a stone hinge, you know, and, and then go to BSR and then going to the west coast of Wales and, you know, going around with German accents and Snowdonia, you know, it was surreal. And then, and then the following week I was flying to Switzerland and meeting you and taking you to see Wolfgang, you know, he’s a very passionate product manager that we have, he spent his life 20 years plus in electrical engineering with ABB. You know, he brings a wealth of experience. Yeah. You didn’t meet at the time.
Guy (20:26.219) Oh, wait, yeah, sorry.
Guy (20:38.648) Hahaha!
Vikram (20:55.37) Mr. Furugyogunsoy, who’s retired now, he’s starting factories in China, next door to Trinna and in Pune and in India. So it was just all going a bit mad, you know? And you are an engineer, you’re also very passionate about what you do. You know, at what point did you start to think about the technology in itself, like number of modules in a string, what kind of inverters to use, would you use centrals, would you use strings, you know? What was your perception as a whole century and how did that translate to Bioware?
Guy (21:24.936) That’s a good one. I mean the dark art we called it at Solicentri the dark art of inverter sizing this Because you’re trying to take all of these different factors into account From your cable sizing, you know cable cross-section. What sort of cable using what effect does that have on your string length, you know? All the way down to what inverters are available what panels are available what framework system we’re using, you know so there’s all of these factors you would take into account for the
Vikram (21:31.723) Right.
Vikram (21:51.223) Mm-hmm.
Guy (21:54.312) Invert a sizing. Now it’s a bit easier. The software is easier to use. You know, I can take all of these things into account and sort of just give you, this is the best option. Take this. But back then it was, you know, we had a couple of spreadsheets and we had a couple of people who were like, you know, thinking about these things and then do this. You know, we would come up with the answer and go back to the sales people who were desperately trying to know what components we had so that they could give a price to the customer. And yeah, it was a bit more.
It was a bit more a dark art. Let’s put it that way. It was more of a lot of spreadsheets and things. So it was always, always part of the job. String sizing, inverter selection. I think to be honest, it’s got less and less so as I’ve gone along. But when I think of when I started a BiVar, they already had a great system setup. They used prefabricated DC cables. They used
certain, they’d like always a tier one module supplier and maybe a backup. They had a tier one inverter supplier and maybe a backup. It was a very set system. You always use this module. You always use this inverter. So there’s much less leeway there in terms of product selection, but you could always come and say, Oh, I’ve seen this new inverter on the market. I’ve done the inverter sizing. I’ve seen like, how does it work with our system that we have now? It could be a possibility. And then the boss would say no.
Vikram (22:57.271) Mm-hmm.
Vikram (23:13.538) Mm-hmm.
Guy (23:21.024) But you know, so the benefit of the set system was you knew exactly how much it cost, you knew exactly how much it worked, how it worked, and you knew that you could replicate it over and over again on each project. So it simplified things. But of course, that system also led later on, you know, coming into the 2016-17 era when the modules were all changing and…
Everyone was, the inverters were the inverter supply problems. Um, that’s when it, that’s when you’re, um, it’s sorry, let me start the sentence again. That’s when your, um, resilience becomes a problem because you’re, you’re no longer able to suddenly adapt to market conditions and so on, if you have a very fixed system. So we had, we had some troubles with that at that time.
redesigning projects, spending a lot of time in project design. For like a 30 or 40 megawatt project to change the module is a big deal. And you have to have to do a lot of design work again. So we went very, being an engineer at that time, wasn’t a very thankful job.
Vikram (24:38.102) You’re taking a lot of risk and what Wolfgang says every time we’re building a new factory with each solar farm because you know standardization is very difficult when you might get different transformers, different modules turning up, you know the mounting structure might be sourced at the last minute and you know the cable design would be one of the last considerations on a few projects and connectors as well.
Guy (24:55.376) Exactly. Yeah. Connectors. Different connectors on different modules. Don’t get me started, Vikram. Oh my God.
Vikram (25:03.634) Yeah, so you’re lucky if you know what connectors you’re getting, you know, the modules are already on the ship and you know, we’ve got anti dumping duties, you know, a lot of that, I think might have busted a few of the big EPCs because you know, they made deals on some pens per watt modules and suddenly you have to deal with the minimum input pricing. So you know, all kinds of new players enter the industry.
Guy (25:15.625) Yeah.
Vikram (25:26.05) As you said, inverters is a bit of a dark art, cable sizing itself is a bit of a dark art. Anything that makes money, you know, pays people’s mortgages and builds livelihoods is a dark art in itself. I never figured out how people do module deals, for example. But for the laypersons, for us people on the outside, it was enormous to see these massive power 1 central inverters appear out of nowhere.
Guy (25:50.22) Hmm. The ultras.
Vikram (25:51.454) and some people working with string inverters, they are a cult sort of developer, some people would only work with centrals, some people work with SMA centrals, some people only work with Huawei strings. Are you a string inverter person or a central inverter person? What do you see as being the future? For large projects we are talking about not commercial or domestic rooftops.
Guy (26:04.661) Mmm.
Guy (26:21.049) I’m still leaning towards strings, just to answer your question quickly. I still lean towards strings for one simple reason, and that’s it is that they are distributed. So centralized systems are more likely to have problems. If you think your central inverter goes down, you have to swap out a power unit.
Vikram (26:43.277) Right.
Guy (26:48.576) that can take weeks. You have to have a special arrangement with the central inverter supply to come and swap out that power unit. And then your whole, that whole power unit is out. So let’s say 250, 500 kilowatts, whatever, or PV is not working. If you’ve got a string inverter, 100 kilowatts, 180 kilowatts, let’s say, there are bigger ones now, but let’s say for a plant in operation. If that inverter drops out and you need to replace it, A, you’ll probably have some in stock, in a…
Vikram (26:55.041) Mm-hmm.
Guy (27:17.576) in a container on site. B, you can get any electrician who works in 400 volt to go and swap that out, because there’s nothing special. You just take the old unit out, put the new unit in, plug it in, turn it on. It’s a much simpler operational effort. So in terms of operation, there’s that huge saving. There’s another saving which we don’t talk about much and which I think will become bigger in the future. If you look now at the plants we build,
Vikram (27:28.749) Mm-hmm.
Guy (27:48.776) They’re usually on flat land. They’re usually quite simple with replicating designs. So it’s very like string lengths are almost always exactly the same. You think a central inverter, the strings all have to be the same length and they all have to be facing exactly the same way to maintain that ideal orientation so you don’t get mismatch. As soon as you have a mismatch, your PR starts going down, performance ratio of the plant.
Vikram (28:05.376) Mm-hmm.
Vikram (28:11.488) Right.
Guy (28:17.396) So you want to maintain that ideal orientation. A string inverter on the other hand, has a number of PowerPoint trackers, and you can have different string lengths or even orientations on the same string inverter. So every five to 10 kilowatts can be a different orientation. It doesn’t matter, the inverter will still happily work. And the important thing is it will maintain your PR. So you’ll have a higher PR for the string inverter.
Vikram (28:43.264) Mm-hmm.
Guy (28:47.04) And when you start to think about bifacial modules, bifacial modules on trackers, trackers which we see now which are terrain following, trackers in difficult terrain, the modules are all pointing different directions at different times of day. Even the normal inclination according to the terrain is all over the place. And that really then benefits the string inverter set up with multiple trackers. It makes it much more difficult for the central inverter.
to maintain that, to work with that amount of mismatch. So again, that’s why I lean towards string inverters, operational and performance reasons.
Vikram (29:28.286) So fascinating, of course in the future, you know, for impartiality, we’ll try to get central inverter people on board and on this podcast and let them talk for themselves. You know, I remember visiting Andy Green in Emerson Control Techniques in the past. He would argue he will have, you know, distributed systems or IGBTs or whatever it is. I’m not a specialist in inverters. In centralized solutions, you know, because the market became crazy and
lot of established players pulled out of the market you know because we were running before we could walk sometimes. It’s interesting you mentioned you know the string inverters you know you have low operational costs you know that’s already showing how advanced you may have been at Biwa and other places because from where I sit the capex seems to be the main driver.
Guy (30:18.069) Yeah.
Vikram (30:18.282) because some of the great things I’ve heard is developers tend to make a lot of the profit by the time the EPC takes on the contract. There’s not a lot of fat left and CAPEX seems to be the driver for people’s cash flows for survival, so to speak. So from a purely CAPEX point of view, would you say or would you consider rather that central inverters are lower cost per watt than string inverters?
Guy (30:41.942) Yeah, sure.
Vikram (30:44.498) Okay.
Guy (30:44.86) Yeah. It’s, but, uh, that’s the thing. Um, the, you’ll have to have a maintenance contract with a central inverter. You have to pay, um, an annual amount to just to keep that central inverter running. Or as you don’t really have that with a string inverter, that’s not really necessary. If it fails, swap it out, you know, put a new one in. If it’s under warranty, you’ll even get that, you know, get the, get the, the swapped out unit back again. So.
Vikram (30:55.456) Mm-hmm.
Guy (31:13.648) And you see that in the US, like the US market is mainly central because of CapEx, US is still very CapEx focused. They’re having problems now with the Opex. They’re having problems with cables. All of the things we’ve seen before, Vikram, they’re having problems with the connectors, it’s, you know, we’ve all been there, been there, done that when we were CapEx focused and then, you know, that’s why we focus on Opex now. That’s why we focus on reducing the operational costs because we know CapEx is once and that’s
Vikram (31:21.133) Mm-hmm.
Vikram (31:27.262) Yeah, yeah, there’s no more problem anymore.
Vikram (31:42.944) Mm-hmm.
Guy (31:43.636) That’s the EBC’s job, but the operation of the plants for 20, 25 years. So those costs are very important.
Vikram (31:45.868) Yeah.
Vikram (31:51.578) We’re seeing the comeback of that because hardly anyone wants to EPC in the UK anymore. I can’t speak much about another market. But you know, without making this conversation too long, you know, for the sake of progress, some of the interesting things I’ve seen as you hinted at Bifacial modules, Maxin PowerPoint tracking, we could talk a bit more about that. But DC coupling, what’s your view on DC coupling, you know?
having uh you know uh do you think that would that would be a comeback for central inverters because you might need a couple batteries with bifacial modules
Guy (32:24.328) Possibly. I mean, we’ve seen that from SMA. At least what I’ve seen is the DC coupling for the SMA battery system.
Guy (32:37.26) It’s all about efficiency, isn’t it? It’s like, how do you, sorry if you’re getting that noise in the background. Well, I’ll just start again. It seems to me to be about the efficiency. If you’re DC-DC, obviously you have less losses. But if you have a good battery system for DC to AC to DC again, and you can still maintain that efficiency, then why not?
Vikram (32:42.25) That’s why we’re busy people. Adds to the ambience.
Guy (33:06.512) I don’t really know a huge amount of the topic to be honest, but I think there’s room for both systems there. From what we’ve seen now, you see sort of more like the large scale storage is also kind of self contained, right? And it’s not necessarily in the field with the panels. It’s in a separate, separate area. So that lends itself better to a, um, a non DC system in my understanding. But again, not my area of expertise.
Vikram (33:34.794) Absolutely fine, it’s something we hint at for the future, you know, we can’t predict what may or may not happen, you know. For example, Cleve Hill Solar Farm, which is 373 megawatt peak DC, is in construction with, you know, string inverters, it’s in the planning documents, you know, it’s all online and you can go have a look. Some of the other things from my own nerdy point of view, you know, I’m heading more and more towards electrical engineering studies, mostly with the help of my…
colleagues, you know, stand on the shoulders of some giants of the past, you know, literally built grids in the Middle East and so on, you know, so I still talk to them, you know, I’m fortunate to still have their, you know, expertise to call on because, you know, some of our work we’ve done in the past is a lot of water under the bridge. But in terms of system sizing, you know, like DC AC ratios, you know, do you have any views on that at all? You know, you don’t need to go into any details. But you know, some people sizing 30%
larger DC arrays overloading this string inverter. So for example you can have a 350 kilowatt string inverter and input almost 624 kilowatts DC arrays onto them. Do you have any thoughts about how the maximum powerpoint trackers work to optimize the system to make sure the inverter is not overloaded?
Guy (34:49.0) Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s tools for this. This is not a, you don’t have to make guesses or just say, okay, I’m gonna do 150% DC overload here just because to save money, you can very clearly see what the effect is on the yield. Cable sizing everything, you can take that into account. It’s a purely financial decision now. So for example, where I work now, PV case, we make software for this, right? We make…
software for the design for the ground mount projects. So like I mentioned before, if you do have to change the module or something or change the string length, you can make that change very quickly. You don’t have to worry about the engineering time for these sorts of changes. It makes the job of the engineer much easier, but also for the yield studies. So for example, being able to send 10 different options of the design you’ve done.
Vikram (35:18.822) Mm-hmm.
Guy (35:45.032) the same maybe different string lengths or different orientations, different tracker spacings, send those to the yield tool and see what effect does that have on the output, you know, and you can very quickly then determine what should be the DC AC ratio. Well, let’s face it, it’s the DC AC risk that you’re taking. Do we risk putting more PV on these inverters and then reduce the yield? You know what I mean? Or reduce the performance.
because it basically caps, right? You’ll instead of having the nice bell shaped curve, your DC will hit a peak, the inverter can’t go any further. So then you basically throw all that into your way. Do you wanna do that? It’s in the olden days when we were doing one kilowatt of DC on a granny’s roof, we had one to one, we had 100% sizing because you didn’t wanna lose a single electron, right? You wanted to get all of that juice into the grid.
Vikram (36:25.186) Mm-hmm.
Vikram (36:42.293) Yes. Yep.
Guy (36:44.104) Whereas now, I mean, when I was working in Japan, we were talking about 200% just to save money. And it was like, yeah, guys, sorry, if, if we do the yield, this doesn’t make sense. You know, you basically have a PR of like 75% or something. It’s the, you’re better off putting in a little bit more money on the inverters.
Vikram (36:47.915) Wow.
Vikram (37:02.034) For me this is really a dark and fascinating, you know, how these power electronics, maximum power point trackers work, you know. Unfortunately, because of rising tensions worldwide, you know, we’ve had Huawei leave the market, you know, they used to push a lot, you know, maximum power point tracking and now, you know, some of the work I’m doing, which I can’t go into details about NDAs being in place and so on, you know, there seems to be a trend on some projects of moving towards distributed maximum power point trackers.
So for me, I’m not looking at it from purely asset management or developer or energy generate point of view. I’m looking at it from an electrical safety and R&D perspective, and how these maximum PowerPoint trackers work to limit the currents or voltages and to make sure the connectors are not melting and the cables are not failing or going over dangerous voltage limits. How these MPPTs work and how they may be distributed in the field and how they may…
Guy (37:29.771) Hmm.
Vikram (37:56.862) work together with battery storage, you know, it’s an area or a field of research for me, but I won’t, you know, make this call too long. You know, for me, the big surprise, let’s be honest, was you’re leaving as the head of engineering. First, you were project development engineer at Bioware, then head of engineering, and then you’re leaving in 2021, you know, still kind of during the lockdown. You know, we didn’t even go into that just to limit the time we’re spending on this particular episode.
Your jump to PBKs for me was a massive shock, you know? How did that happen for you?
Guy (38:29.164) Well, again, I’ve been a bivouac for eight years. I’ve been doing projects all over the place. And I was just starting to do the same thing over and over again. And I don’t know if you’ve ever had to do the same thing over and over again. After a while, it gets a bit boring and you feel like you’re banging your head against the wall and you want to try something new.
Vikram (38:31.702) Mm-hmm.
Vikram (38:42.016) Right.
Vikram (38:48.717) Mm-hmm.
You want new challenges, you want to stay motivated, you know, you want to get out of bed looking forward to something, you know, I completely get that. You know, that’s the reason why I ended up being traveling in China and looking at other markets and, you know, always trying to evolve with the times. And so now we talk about the future. Well, you know, there’s a lot of naysayers, they say solar is a joke, you know, it hardly generates any megawatt hours, you know, it only works in the summer.
Guy (38:58.793) Yeah.
Guy (39:18.336) Who says that?
Vikram (39:20.502) A lot of people that want to push oil and gas and nuclear and some people from hydrogen, sometimes they can be an overlap as well. What do you see as the future of solar photovoltaics specifically?
Guy (39:23.785) All those guys.
Guy (39:35.36) Well, I don’t see what is the future of solar. I just see the future is solar. There isn’t any question now. The price is so low. The price of energy, the cost of energy, sorry, for solar is so low. I mean, it’s a bad time to be in the fossil fuel industry or the nuclear industry because they can’t compete. Their days are numbered. I mean, if you look at the cost of BESS as well, energy storage is going down.
Vikram (39:39.083) Right.
Mm-hmm.
Vikram (39:55.78) Mm-hmm.
Vikram (40:03.008) Right.
Guy (40:03.848) In five years, this won’t even be a conversation. It won’t even be like, oh, should we be putting in nuclear or we need to buy gas from somewhere? I’ll just be like, we need to put in as much solar as possible, as much as we can afford, as much as we can install, given the physical constraints, the installation constraints and batteries. If you have enough batteries and enough solar, you can empower the whole grid in the middle of winter.
Vikram (40:16.845) Mm-hmm.
Guy (40:35.825) It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. This is going to happen. It is the cheapest form of energy. And it’s really just a matter of how long it’s gonna take to get to that point, five, 10 years, whatever. But nothing will stop that march of solar over the next short period.
Vikram (40:54.466) Well, I won’t mention my sources of who’s going to say that, but you’ll be surprised. There are seasoned engineers, some of them with PhDs, some of them electric contractors that worked for 40 years in my tennis club. You know, they go, what happens in the middle of winter at 4 p.m. when the sun sets? They argue that solar is almost a cannibalistic technology because when it’s working, nothing else can compete. And, you know, those generators stop producing or gas winds down. And suddenly we have a gas crisis, you know, because the prices are uncontrollably high.
What’s your solution to energy in the winter then? If there is no sun at 4pm in the UK or…
Guy (41:28.02) But I just told you, Vikram, you have to install more solar. Let’s say you’ve got a one kilowatt solar plant. In the middle of winter, it produces 100 watts.
Vikram (41:34.318) Mm-hmm. Right.
Vikram (41:39.158) Right.
Guy (41:40.584) So if your demand is in winter is a hundred Watts problem solved, you have to install as much, so much solar and battery energy storage that it covers the demand at the worst time.
Vikram (41:44.287) Mm-hmm.
Guy (41:56.264) See what I mean? So if your worst time for solar is the middle of winter, and it’s only producing, let’s look on a grid scale now. If your worst time for solar is middle of winter, and it’s only producing 10 gigawatts in the middle of winter, then you need to install 100 gigawatts. So the 100 gigawatts produces 10 gigawatts in the middle of winter. Then your problem is solved. Then you can be 100% solar plus wind. Yep.
Vikram (42:00.802) Mm-hmm.
Vikram (42:10.189) Right.
Vikram (42:21.878) But interesting you said you said early on that you’re a farmer’s son, you know, and a lot of people say that if you’re going to install more solar, you’re competing with food now. So what’s your view on that?
Guy (42:32.36) The food industry is also going to have a huge change in the next 10 years. We’re only just seeing the start of like, uh, what do you call it? Synthetically produced proteins, these sorts of things. Um, the, the meat industry is going to go down. I think the, I don’t think you’ll even see much pressure on, um, agriculture for producing synthetic fuels. I think the, the number of the amount of food, which is going to be, um, synthetically produced is.
Vikram (42:36.301) Right.
Vikram (42:41.058) Mm-hmm.
Vikram (42:56.267) Right.
Guy (43:01.388) is going to grow up and the pressure on the agricultural industry is going to go down.
But also we’ve seen as well, agri PV is big now. It’s quite easy to have PV working very comfortably in conjunction with agriculture. They don’t have to compete.
Vikram (43:21.942) Fantastic. So we’re coming towards the end of our conversation. Last question I want to ask you guys is where do you see yourself this time next year? You know, you don’t have a crystal ball. There’s so many things going on. There’s, you know, two wars happening right now, if not more. Where do you think we will be Christmas time 2024?
Guy (43:37.504) Yeah.
Guy (43:43.276) To be honest, Vikram, I hope I’m still doing the same thing. I hope I’m still working in software. I hope we’re still making it easier to install solar everywhere. And I hope that the numbers keep going up. I hope we hope we get more solar into the grid. And I’m also hoping that the non-renewable energies are further down. I hope that we can see some bankruptcies in oil companies and in car companies that refuse to build electric cars.
Vikram (44:05.974) Mm-hmm.
Guy (44:12.448) That sort of thing. No, I hope so. I hope the writing’s on the wall for these companies already. And you can see already if you look at the share price of Volkswagen and so on, what’s gonna happen to them in a year? I don’t know the answer, but I’m hoping I’m doing the same thing. I’m hoping I’m still fighting for solar and winning.
Vikram (44:31.49) Fantastic guy. I’ve certainly enjoyed this conversation. Thanks so much for joining us.
Guy (44:37.501) No worries, thanks for the comment.
Vikram (00:01) Welcome again to our first episode following the initial introduction. It’s Vikram from Ventus Cables and Connectivity. A little bit more about myself. I’ve been working for Suda Cables AG Switzerland as the agent and global key accounts manager for a long while now coming up to 12 years. ⁓ In this journey, you we worked on over two and half gigawatts of solar projects mostly in the UK but some international as well. I’ve had enormous pleasure meeting some great people in the industry.
⁓ One of those is Mr. Matthew Zenakis of JSola. Matthew, welcome.
speaker-1 (00:36) Thanks very much, Vikram Great to be on here. Yes, so I work for JASOLA as the utility scale sales manager. A bit about JASOLA. We managed to deliver 10 gigawatts of modules to Europe last year, 600 megawatts to the UK in a 1.3 gigawatt market, and yeah, looking to achieve similar sort of numbers in 2023.
Vikram (01:05) Tell us a bit more about you as a person Matthew, how did you get into solo?
speaker-1 (01:10) So, funnily enough, the reason I got into renewable energy was mainly because I was born and raised in Zimbabwe and we used to endure quite a few power cuts along the way. And then after experiencing that sort of, you know, the level of power cuts that we used to experience, I then studied electrical engineering at Stellenbosch University. I worked for a solar distributor in Zimbabwe.
called One Stop Solar. We designed, installed and sold off-grid systems ⁓ mainly because to assist during blackouts. From there I moved to the UK at the start of 2020. I then worked as a sales engineer for a solar thermal and PVT company called Naked Energy. ⁓ From there I then moved to JA Solar.
Vikram (02:10) You’ve got any LinkedIn profile Matthew, a sales technician at One Stop Solo, tell us a bit about them.
speaker-1 (02:19) One
Stop Solar, they were a distributor in Zimbabwe and they sold and installed solar systems.
mainly to residential homes to combat the sort of power cuts that were quite prevalent in Zimbabwe and still are. It was a great job, managed to get my hands dirty a little bit whilst installing a few systems. Went and did some large scale installations on farms, ⁓ worked with some VSDs, variable speed drives to sort of pump water out of rivers into farm dams to help with irrigation.
the lands.
Vikram (03:02) And Naked Energy, they make PVT tubes, right?
speaker-1 (03:08) That’s correct. So they’ve designed a really unique and fantastic product. ⁓ They have a solar collector that can produce hot water as well as produce electricity.
Vikram (03:23) Fantastic and everyone has too much information these days. The first thing we do is we look at people’s LinkedIn profiles, check if they’ve embarrassed themselves on Facebook or Instagram or anything like that. But let’s not go off the page too much. What I see on here is you started with Naked Energy almost exactly when we went into lockdown in March 2020. When did you come to the UK and tell us a bit more about your journey? Huge transition coming from Africa to the
UK.
speaker-1 (03:54) Yeah,
it was a bit of an interesting experience. I managed to find Naked Energy while I was in Zimbabwe, funnily enough. And as I moved over, I had my last interview with the team based out in Crawley. ⁓ a bit of unfortunate timing, my first day was the 23rd of March. I remember exactly because that was the first day of the UK lockdown.
And yeah, since then it sort of took a little bit of time to get up to speed with the way things work in the UK and this sort of changes. yeah, everyone was very welcoming and naked energy as well as the people in general in the UK.
Vikram (04:36) It seems like after two years with Naked Energy, you made the move to work with Alistair at JSola from April 2022. How did that transition happen for you?
speaker-1 (04:49) Yeah, so Alistair and I had a few conversations. For those of you that don’t know, Alistair Monsi is the sales director for UK, Italy, France and Ireland for JASOLA. We had a few conversations and eventually led to me joining the JASOLA team in April 2022.
Vikram (05:09) fantastic and they are almost two years old. Tell us a bit more about what you do now at JSola.
speaker-1 (05:17) At
JAA at the moment, there’s three of us. So there’s myself, Alistair and Alexa Thomas-Derek. We’re a dedicated team to help deploy solar modules in the UK and Ireland. At the moment, we are really busy, which is always a good thing.
There’s lots of solar to be sold in the UK and at the moment prices are coming down for solar modules which is always fantastic thing especially if we need to transition to net zero in order to meet these net zero targets that have been set.
And yeah, I think it’s a really important time for the UK solar industry at the moment to sort of focus on these large scale ground mounted as well as commercial projects. And also for the sort of homeowner to be looking at deploying solar modules on their roofs too.
Vikram (06:13) fantastic and uh… what sticks in my mind is ten billion u s dollars you know jay being a fortune china five hundred company and global top five hundred new uh… renewable energy companies ten billion dollars that’s a lot of uh… lot of solar panels how how how what is that in terms of megawatts and gigawatts
speaker-1 (06:34) It’s hard to really know. We started off as a cell manufacturer and ⁓ we then transitioned to a module manufacturer ⁓ in 2009. Since then we’ve been deploying modules all over the world. We have over 100 gigawatts of cumulative shipments of modules and last year we managed to get a market share of about 16 percent, which kind of just shows how the market’s growing in the moment.
⁓ just not even in the UK and Europe globally too.
Vikram (07:09) So 100 gigawatt peak is like totally cumulative since J started.
speaker-1 (07:13) That is, ⁓ and that’s only for numbers at the end of 2021.
Vikram (07:18) Fantastic
and interesting that you mentioned that you’ve got a degree in electrical engineering, if I heard that correct. you know, so I want to know from your opinion, it doesn’t need to be correct. You know, it’s not an exam. But capacity factors, a lot of naysayers about the industry, know, like Arnold Schwarzenegger says on his podcast, don’t listen to the naysayers. A lot of naysayers say solons never going to work, know, capacity factors, almost nothing. But you know, from my own research, you know, I researched about
between 9 and 11 percent in the UK, not a very sunny country. 100 gigawatts, know, even at the low end, you you’re looking at what, 10 gigawatt peak? You know, in terms of capacity factors, what is your thought about capacity factors in solar?
speaker-1 (08:04) I don’t know capacity factors. What do mean by capacity factors?
Vikram (08:08) Capacity
factors as in say you got 100 gigawatt peak
solar shipment or say you’ve got 100 megawatt peak solar plant theoretically you know it’s not going to be working 24 hours a day because it doesn’t work during the night irradiance is a lot lower in the winter so even if you might have 100 gigawatt solar plant what the academics tell us is we’re actually getting 10 percent of the nameplate capacity so 100 megawatt solar farm would actually generate say 10 megawatt
speaker-1 (08:35) Thank
Vikram (08:44) And so lot of naysayers, ⁓ oil and gas lobbyists, hydrogen, nuclear industry, they tend to say, know, solar’s never going to work because there’s almost no capacity factors. You know, so is this something you’ve thought about in your busy life of 100 gigawatts as a company?
speaker-1 (09:03) Yeah, so funny enough, everyone when I speak to Zimbabweans back home, they say, I can’t believe you’re doing solar in the UK. There’s no sun there. And to be honest, they are completely wrong. There’s a lot of sun and enough to sort of power the UK for sure, especially if we start pairing it with wind and battery storage. This can improve the capacity factor for sure. ⁓
And what a lot of people don’t understand is solar modules tend to work better on a cold, sunny winter’s day compared to a hot summer’s day. PV modules get less effective during a really hot summer’s day compared to if they are nicely cooled in the winter as well as absorbing the UV rays.
Vikram (09:50) Right, Matthew, I sell cable and engineering services for key accounts. We’re working mostly for large scale. I’ve supplied some rooftops as well, some large ones like Bentley in the past. You know, my interest in talking to module manufacturers, especially ones as reputable as JSO because most of my clients tend to speak very highly of you. It’s just really not what’s going on in the industry because, know, modules are produced sometimes two years before construction.
And you know, the elephant in the room, of course, you know, we’ve had a lot of tumultuous times with Brexit, with the pandemic, with the Ukraine war. It’s still not concluded. And we’ve already started another one in the Middle East, you know. So conditions have been fantastic. But if I look back to the conception of the large scale industry, of course, it started in Germany and then Spain and their feed-in tariffs were dramatically reduced. And suddenly ⁓ the exports from Germany, Spain rushed in and the Netherlands with Oscar Mayer have rushed into the UK.
Market we had 50 megawatts in 2011 according to the renewable energy planning database, which you can find online Through the department from net zero each we call be is Then we have 75 megawatts in 2012, know, then we peaked in 2015 at two and a half gigawatts of course the big be were the brexit thing started referendum in 2016 and then we nosedive from there to you know 36 megawatts in 2019 2019 and then even though
In the lockdown year 2020 we did more 96 and then the Ukraine energy crisis, raw material shortage we did 53 megawatts in 2021 and 2022 I’m seeing on the government website operational assets of only 223 megawatts. Of course these databases are rarely up to date and they only count operational solar farms. What is your take on the installation and deployment of Lake?
speaker-1 (11:46) So.
I believe that the deployment of solar has been slightly more than that when you obviously include commercial and residential. So as by our numbers we have from PV module tech that in 2021 there was 700 megawatts deployed and in 2022 there was 1.3 gigawatts deployed. This year we’re probably looking at about 1.7 gigawatts to be installed in the UK this year and I’d like to
challenge everyone to hopefully get over 2Gb for 2024.
Vikram (12:23) Fantastic. ⁓ this is what we are forecasting as well. Of course, our data is a bit out of date compared to yours because we work mostly on the EPC side. Often the module deals are done, you know. So what we are seeing on the official channels, which is a lags a bit and may not include all projects. Some of them may need off-chim accreditation or whatever, you know, to be counted officially. You know, so we’re seeing
Yeah, red trend of only 272 megawatts at the moment for 2023 but for second half of 2023 there’s 1700 megawatts in construction, you know, that’s really exciting because You know, means we should have easily over 2 gigawatts obviously fingers crossed we’ve gone knows what else can happen more lockdowns of course, we hope we are over The bad luck that we had since break said and then we could start another
boom time but there is a lot of excitement to talk about because the largest solar farms I think the last one was 75 probably Land-Wern with Next and ⁓ one before that was 72 megawatt peak, Shotwick Solar Farm with BSR which is currently owned by Foresight. So we are not only being ambitious but the industries jump from 75 megawatts to 373 megawatts peak in construction only in one solar farm with Cleve Hill.
And then there’s also a 400 megawatt peak or probably 500 megawatts with Longfield with the EDF. What is your view on these massive NSIP jobs? Do think they will be a reality one day?
speaker-1 (14:06) Yeah, I think Cleve Hill is a great example. It’s great to see that the planning has been approved for these other projects such as Longfield, which is a 500 megawatt site. NSIP, for those of you that don’t know, is National Significant Infrastructure Projects, and they are large-scale solar farms that tend to be well over 100 megawatts.
I saw recently, Vikram, I don’t know what your take on this is, that there’s a 1GW that’s been, which has gone into planning recently. That’s the largest one that I’ve seen recently. Have you heard anything from it so far?
Vikram (14:46) Yes, think it’s called Great North Road or something like that. It’s something to definitely follow up on later on. The good thing about NSIP or National Significant Infrastructure Projects is it’s all public and anyone can go have a look. I want to talk to you a bit about the Solar Task Force, which has just been established because the industry really has been neglected by the current incumbent government since 2016. It’s been a boom and bust cycle. The UK has the largest offshore wind resource
potentially in Europe and know solar is there to complement when the winds are blowing you need something to fill the gap. Of course we need a mix of different technologies but you know nuclear is not coming on life fast enough so the government may have busted maybe 20,000 jobs when they dramatically reduced freedom tariffs after offering a policy that was far too generous. Now I see online that there’s a solar
task force established by the government which is writing the solar roadmap which aims to deploy 70 gigawatts by 2035. Of course we’ve been lagging massively so this means four and a half gigawatts a year from 2024. Do you see that anywhere near being plausible considering we haven’t got any people to build anything right now?
speaker-1 (16:08) think it’s going to be very tough. ⁓ We are seeing a of foreign EPCs starting to move into the UK as well. ⁓ I don’t think the current… ⁓
infrastructure that the UK has at the moment will facilitate four and a half gigawatts a year unless we are able to to get more traction with local EPCs who are extremely busy at the moment ⁓ and they just don’t have the bandwidth to take on these larger projects and multitude of them.
⁓ So I think we will definitely need to increase the number of local EPCs in the UK. As you mentioned, there’s a lot of projects in development. It’s going to be a long road to achieve that target, but rather be ambitious than not, I guess.
Vikram (16:57) absolutely and it’s something that will have to happen because
You know, the net zero strategy is very aggressive. In my opinion, I work in this industry. I’ve spent my life almost in solar and cable. I think it’s just far too ambitious what the government’s planning. And then the roadmap seems to not be present at the moment. So we’ll be looking to see what gets published in February 2024. Obviously, the names on this task force, you know, a lot of people will recognize like Ben Fawcett, who was at EDF Renewables, according to his most recent job title.
Liz McFarlane from Siegen and Ross Greer from Next Energy Capital. So a lot of these names are known. It’s a small industry, but You know, we won’t go too much into that in this short episode Matthew but what I do want to ask about and a lot of people will be thinking when they think about JS Ola or any major module manufacturer is Is the module pricing right now? I’ve heard 18 cents of what being quoted I’ve heard this 40 gigawatts in the warehouse in Rotterdam
What is your view on pricing and capacities and stock?
speaker-1 (18:06) So
currently the pricing is obviously quite low, the lowest it’s ever been actually and this is attributed to a number of factors. The first one is we mentioned earlier that the installation for 2023 has not been as significant as was anticipated at the beginning of the year. Lots of solo panel manufacturers increased their capacity as well as a lot of new
solar panel manufacturers joining the game. So there was definitely an oversupply of modules with the expectation of it being installed within the UK, Europe, Africa, China, all over the world. This plus a decrease in the raw materials has all sort of caused the price to fall. So within Rotterdam, I don’t know the exact number, but there is a number of ⁓ megawatts in stock there.
possibly gigawatts for all different manufacturers. This is a real interesting point though, is that the two different types of technologies are also playing a part in this. We’re seeing a bit of a shift in the market from P-type to N-type solar modules. So the P-type is not so much in demand as we had originally anticipated and the transition to N-type has taken
a lot shorter than we had originally expected.
Vikram (19:41) And what is your view on these massive modules like 650 watt monofacials and have you had any thoughts about bifacial modules yourself?
speaker-1 (19:51) Yeah,
so at JOSOLA we tend to stick with smaller module sizes. our biggest module size is a 630 watt module. The main reason we do this is for shipping. It comes double stacked on a pallet rather than ⁓ vertically with these larger modules. So we tend to get less breakages and less cracking ⁓ after time within the field.
and the technology is advancing so much. as I mentioned, now we’re on to N-type Topcon, which has increased the efficiency quite significantly. So there’s no need to go bigger in terms of module sizes. I feel like the technology will catch up. Next thing you know, we’re going to be doing tandem cells and this could increase the cell efficiency to up to 28%.
Yeah, it’s a sort R &D game at the moment and we’ll see where we get up to.
Vikram (20:58) Thanks very much Matthew. Before we close this podcast, for me people are the most interesting thing about this industry. We’ve not just had boom and bust cycles with Brexit, with the corona lockdowns, with the Ukraine war, with the labor shortages, now inflation and interest rate rise. one of the good things in the solar industry is, and I’ve written an article about this before for Leoni, ⁓
⁓ solar magazine in the past is that you know one of the phrases used in this industry is called the solar coaster because we’ve had boom and bust cycles constantly, continuously. There’s one in Germany, then there’s retroactive actions in Spain and people lost their businesses and came to this industry. Then we have 41p a kilowatt hour subsidies. don’t think they ever predicted that people would install solar farms. I think they were aiming for two kilowatt rooftops.
they withdrew this subsidies and then there was anti-dumping tariffs that was imposed and people had shipments on the water when the tariffs came in you know and then there’s also the grid connection deadline so we are used to things changing so the kind of people that stick with this industry it’s really takes a lot of guts so Matthew with that in mind and you’re relatively new in this industry where do you see yourself in the future what do you think will be the future of the industry in the next
years by 2030 and where do you see yourself most importantly this time next year?
speaker-1 (22:33) So
as you mentioned, it’s a solar coaster. It tends to happen with newish industries where it’s a bit volatile. But hopefully I see a bit of consistency coming through, especially with these ambitious net zero targets and the changes that we’re seeing globally, whether it be extreme temperatures, massive storms, there’s going to be a particular focus on renewable energy and in particularly solar.
I see that the industry will definitely grow ⁓ exponentially in the next few years and it’s going to be a fun ride to go on it.
Vikram (23:16) Fantastic, Matthew. Thanks so much for joining us.
speaker-1 (23:20) Thank you Vikram.