A battery only earns its keep when it can connect to the grid and get to work. What does it take to turn better battery technology into a viable energy project? In episode 373 of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague speaks with Dr. Simon Engelke, founder of Battery Associates and Battery MBA and host…

Grid storage is growing faster than the industry expected. EVs accounted for more than 70% of global battery deployment in 2025, down from almost 80% in 2024, according to the IEA.  On this CPH Live, Tim Montague and John Weaver unpack stationary battery storage growth and follow the batteries to two places: 230 GW of…

How do you take a 365 kW commercial solar project from a customer conversation to steel in the ground? In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague goes behind the scenes of a 365 kW commercial solar project for Griffin Beverage in West Branch, Michigan, with Jordan Rhyne of Countryside Energy and Kyle…

What if your solar system could earn far more by powering AI compute than by selling electricity back to the grid?   In this episode of Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague talks with Karl Andersen, founder and CEO of Lektra, about a different approach to the growing power demands of AI. Lektra places GPU servers…

America may need more than 230 GW of new power capacity through 2030. Regulated utilities are expected to deliver only about 93 GW. So where does the rest come from? Tim Montague takes that question to Sylvia Leyva Martinez, Director of North America Utility-Scale Solar at Wood Mackenzie, on a crossover with her show Interchange…

G&W Electric’s vanadium flow + flywheel microgrid matched a full year of frequency regulation revenue in under three months  Vanadium flow batteries rarely anchor a commercial microgrid, but G&W Electric built one around a solar, battery, and flywheel system at its Bolingbrook, Illinois headquarters. John Gounaris, VP of Global Marketing, and John Pederson, Principal Staff…

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,…