Speed to power: Bala Ramamurthy of Critical Loop on cutting grid connection from years to days with modular microgrids.  Speed to power is the problem Critical Loop was built to solve. Bala Ramamurthy is the founder and CEO of Critical Loop, a California modular microgrid company that brings megawatts to industrial facilities and data centers…

Section 232 tariffs are reshaping solar module pricing across the United States. Tim Montague and co-host John Weaver sit down with returning guest Chris Lettman, a solar module supply chain and technology expert with Imperial Star Solar.  Chris explains why the new policy works as a price floor, not a simple tariff, setting a minimum…

Clean energy company culture is what separates good solar EPCs from great ones, and Mynt Systems CEO Derek Hansen has a name for how he builds it: inspire, empower, support. Company culture in the solar and storage industry gets talked about far less than it should, and this episode makes the case for why that…

Solar asset management inside a 35-year ownership model: CJ Colavito and Jay Smith of Standard Solar explain what it actually takes to own distributed generation projects for decades, from evaluating tracker and inverter reliability to redesigning inverter specs around eventual failure. In this episode of Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague sits down with CJ Colavito,…

The Federal Communications Commission’s new ban on foreign-produced solar inverters left the industry without clear answers on warehoused stock, firmware updates, and grid cybersecurity risk.  On this episode of The Clean Power Hour Live, hosts Tim Montague and John Weaver break down the foreign inverter ban alongside new Section 232 solar tariffs that set a…

Chris Koczaja grew LightWave Solar to 30 million dollars by refusing to chase every deal. This is the discipline that got him there. Chris Koczaja is the CEO of LightWave Solar, a residential and commercial solar and storage installer in Nashville, Tennessee, now in its 20th year in business.  In this conversation, Tim Montague asks…

Enhanced rock weathering pulls carbon dioxide from the air using crushed rock. Jim Mann, CEO and founder of Undo, explains how the process works and why the technology scales fast. Undo turns rock dust into permanent carbon storage and sells credits to Microsoft and British Airways at $350 a ton, a price Mann expects to…

Dual-use solar financing in action: Sunrise Solar’s Richard Stoltzfus built a 700 kW behind-the-meter array for Harbor Sales Company. The build stacks a USDA REAP grant with a Maryland MEA grant and drives the customer’s levelized energy cost to near zero. A 700 kW behind-the-meter solar array now offsets 70 percent of the electric load…

Georgia is the second-largest data center market in the country, and its grid is straining under load growth no one predicted five years ago. Michael Chanin, CEO of Cherry Street Energy, joins Tim to break down how behind-the-meter solar and storage are stepping in, why utilities need private capital to keep rates in check, and…

The U.S. needs 400 GW of new capacity over the next two decades. Michael Grasso, CEO and founder of Grid Rails, tells Tim Montague that roughly twice that much flexible capacity is already plugged in, and explains why only 20% of eligible devices are enrolled in virtual power plant programs today. Data centers, EVs, heat…