Growing the Illinois Solar Market with Michelle Knox, WindSolarUSA | EP190

You know, I've got three different teams working clear from everywhere from Bloomington, Peoria all the way down to Cairo. We just finished a big project in mounds, Illinois and one of the poorest counties in the whole state. So I'm very proud of that. And that's all been a part of the process that ISEA was was involved in.

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Today on the Clean Power Hour, we continue our journey. The Illinois Solar Energy Association is our state organization. If you're an installer developer, EPC, OEM service provider in the solar industry and working in Illinois, you need to understand what ISEA is about and you need to become a member. Reach out to me, Tim Montague, check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. And please tell a friend about the show. today. My guest is Michelle Knox she is the owner of Wind Solar USA. It's a lovely name. You just took the whole enchilada enchilada right there, Michelle. But tell tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. Michelle, you are a past board member of icea and very well established solar company in central Illinois. So give our listeners a little piece of your background and why you started wind, wind solar USA.

Sure, thanks, Tim. Thanks for having me on the show. So yeah, I formed the company back in 2008. And it was really just for the purposes of being able to provide a level of sustainability and self sufficiency to all market segments, whether it be ag producers, or homeowners or even commercial and industrial users. And at the time, there were only two trainings, offered opportunities in the whole country, the mrea, which we all know right here in the Midwest, and then solar energies in Colorado, well, it made more sense to go to Wisconsin. And so I took my training there, and trained on solar wind and solar thermal simultaneously. I did that for about three and a half years and developed all of my partnerships in terms of install partners and distributor networks and so on. And then I went full time November of 2011. And here I am today.

So you've seen, you know, the industry really grow and mature here in Illinois, we're a top 10 Solar state now, thanks to FEJA and CEJA. And it's not without its ups and downs. But for the most part now we have a good 10 year runway for distributed generation in Illinois. And it's you know, it's the full spectrum, we have incentives for residential, commercial, industrial, community and utility solar. And, and that's because of our RPS, our renewable portfolio standard. If you don't have a good RPS, you don't likely have a good DG market, you might have a good utility market, like Florida or Texas, but you don't have a good DG market per se. But tell us why you got involved with icea. And what it means for you.

Well, I was contacted by Leslie McCain, the executive director, and she asked if I would be interested in being a board member. And I, of course, said that I would I think they were looking to expand and have some representation in the central and southern part of the state. And so I joined the board and worked with I call it the good old, the good old club. Back in the day, most of us are still in the industry, and we're all really good friends. And our work at that time was was really critical legislatively, you know, and making sure that we were advancing solar, you know, helping to work with other environmental organizations originally, when in the preparation of FEJA. And getting all of that together and providing input battling multiple battles across the state and trying to provide education but when I say battling, just trying to make sure that you Utility Policies stayed stayed good. We've done several different things. We've worked in many Co Op territories on trying to help customers in those territories that make might have trouble. Also, even in the investor owned utilities when Amerind thought that net metering had reached its 5% penetration level. We had to go to the Illinois Commerce Commission and do some testifying. And so a lot of good things that I Think through the efforts of icea have allowed solar to continue to advance as we had all envisioned that it would way back when you put

your finger on something right there, which is a value add that, that ISEA brings to the industry. You know, we have these rules baked into the legislation that when solar reaches a certain threshold of the grid, that the utilities can start to pull back on net metering. Well, lo and behold, Amerind tried to do that, somewhat prematurely. And if it weren't for stakeholders like icea, and and others, the LPC, the CCSA, vote solar, etc. I mean, there's there's many stakeholders in any clean economy. But that is so important, right? To keep the utilities honest, and keep the pressure on to basically maximize the value for consumers and business owners. That's what we are standing up for the right to put solar on your facility and benefit from free sunshine with technology that makes electricity with photons. It sounds so such a basic right. And yet, in many parts of the United States today, utilities don't really allow consumers to benefit from that. That free resource, right? Because they don't have net metering. If you don't have net metering, and we see this in California, and I point this out on every episode I do about icea. Because what happens in California happens elsewhere. That is that is the writing on the wall, right? That is the future that net metering is going to get pulled out from under us in the future in all markets across the United States. And so right now, we have very generous net metering, and we want to hold on to that as long as we can. And by generous, I mean full retail net metering. Now, there are some subtleties around the smart inverter rebate, Illinois, the Illinois solar program is complicated. But if you're sophisticated, and you really dig into it, and learn the program, you have a wonderful market, we're going to install 10 gigawatts of solar between now and 2030. In Illinois, right, so there's a lot of opportunity here, this great

opportunity. And, you know, just speaking from a business owner, who was I was very small, obviously, you know, I started this business from nothing. my that was my goal to start something from nothing and make it be something. And so, you know, in the beginning, I didn't it was just me. And then you know, am I am I subcontracted installers. And if we look at fast forward to today, the benefits that we've seen come about as a result of, you know, the legislative endeavors that were done, and everybody working together cooperatively and collaboratively with our legislators to get these monumental pieces of legislation passed. You know, I've got three different teams working. Claire from everywhere from Bloomington, Peoria, all the way down to K IRA, we just finished a big project in mounds, Illinois, and one of the poorest counties in the whole country, or in the whole state, excuse me. And so I'm very proud of that. And that's all been a part of the process that I've seen, I was was involved in the Illinois solar energy Association's been there, we've done lobby days, we do a lot of educating to the environment, or to the just the customers about the environment about the climate in Illinois, what opportunities are here, why we need to, you know, stay on top of this. And I'm very grateful for that. I think the lobby days are probably one of the most important things that we do, because it gives our legislators an opportunity to be able to hear from constituents exactly what the legislation stands to do for them. And so very grateful for all of that outreach that's been done. And, and like you say, the wonderful policy we have, and our RPS that was originally passed back in 2007, which at that time, I think was was really good. 25% by 2025. Now up to 40% by 2030. That's awesome. With the overall goal, as we know, Tim of getting to 100% by 2050. So yay.

It's a totally worthy goal. It's totally doable. It's just a question of, can we install the solar fast enough, but it's a both and right you need many small stars to align to have a good solar market. And, you know, right now, when the stars are aligned in Illinois, we did have a boom and a bust you know and boomed in 2018 and it busted in 2020. But now we have a much longer runway, and you know, many, many companies and stakeholders coming to Illinois from other Mark It's as it should be, because we just don't have all of the indigenous resources here in Illinois. And if you are interested, if you're listening to this, and you're interested in learning more about ICAO reach out to me, and I will happily share my thoughts about the benefits of membership. But Michelle, what do you say to prospective members, you've mentioned lobby day, you mentioned, you know, this circle of, of OGS of other established players in the market that you will get to know and get to work with and that is super value. But what else would you say to prospective members?

I think that, in general, if you have a question about solar, whether you be whether you're just a homeowner thinking about putting solar on your home, or maybe you're a small business, like I was, you know, just getting started in the market, it's wonderful to have a resource where you can reach out to the organization, get your questions, answered. Leslie's wonderful if she doesn't have the answer, she has resources to be able to get it. Many of the board members also come from diverse backgrounds. And so they also serve as a wonderful resource for questions. And if Leslie doesn't know, she can usually go to one of them. And then somebody can come in and help with that. And so I just think that having a trade resource that you're able to easily access and gain assistance from when necessary, it is a wonderful asset. And for the membership fee, I think it's well worth it and creates a lot of value to like I said, everyone, from the homeowner to the business owner, whether you'd be small, large or otherwise. Yeah,

I'm glad that you mentioned this, you know, if you are a facility owner or a homeowner and want to get your questions answered, there is an FAQ on the website, Illinoissolar.org. There's also Illinois shines. Okay, that is the main State website, Illinoisshines.com. And you can also reach out to Michelle, how can our listeners find you Michelle?

Well, my website is windsolarusa.com. My email is Michelle at windsolarusa.com. I tried to keep it very simple. So either of those are opportunities to be able to reach us and we also from the website have an email link that goes to our info box that folks can click on as well. The website was built as an educational tool. I was a teacher previous to this for 10 years, I was a Montessori teacher. And so education is near and dear to my heart. And when I was setting this up, I wanted to provide that resource because remember, back in the day, 2008 to 2010, we didn't have a lot of information about solar. And so I set it up that way for that purpose.

Yeah, there's a need for a lot of education. People don't understand solar, it's still new here in the Midwest, especially, if you go to the east coast of the West Coast, you see much more solar those markets happened earlier, because of a variety of things, the cost of electricity for one is much higher on the coasts. And so the value of solar electrons is greater. Here in the Midwest, we have very cheap fossil electricity. And that's changing though now right, we are getting large tranches of wind and solar, and batteries. And and we are Greening the Grid. So I want to thank you, Michelle Knox, Winfrey, of wind solar USA, for coming on the show. And please reach out to me, my website is cleanpowerhour.com. You can find all of our content there. We're posting two of these interviews, we do one recorded interview, and then a news roundup with John Weaver, who is a journalist for PV magazine. So check out the Live tab on our YouTube channel, but go to cleanpowerhour.com. And you can find all of our content, please give us a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. That is the best thing you can do to help grow the show. And I want to say thank you again, Michelle. Let's grow solar and storage.

That's right. Thank you, Tim, for having me and have a great rest of your day.

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