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The Value Creation Mindset explores the decisions successful leaders make to create real, lasting value for their customers, teams, and businesses.
Hosted by A.J. Singh, each episode features candid conversations with founders, CEOs, and builders who have been in the trenches, unpacking hard-earned lessons on leadership, technology, strategy, and execution. No hype. No shortcuts. Just clear thinking, first principles, and practical insight from people who have actually built things that work.
Speaker: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm AJ Singh. Welcome to the Value Creation Mindset, the podcast that explores the principles behind the decisions successful business leaders make to create value for, for their customers and themselves. Today, I am joined by Tim Montague, clean energy experts, solar business coach, author, and host of the Clean Power Hour podcast.
In the next hour, we'll unpack how, how, uh, how, uh, how, uh, leaders in the clean energy space create value in a fast changing market, how Tim thinks about growth, execution, and trust in clean tech, and where AI and other technologies can help companies move faster without losing focus on what actually matters.
Speaker: Tim, thanks for joining us. Thank
Speaker 2: you very much, aj. It's great to be here. [00:01:00]
Speaker: Now for listeners who, who may not know you yet, what, what problem space are you most focused on right now and why does it matter for you and your customers?
Speaker 2: I am a catalyst for what we call the clean energy transition, which is one of many transitions that humans have made over the millennia, but we are now transitioning to wind, solar, and batteries.
I happen to be very focused on solar and batteries, and the reason this transition is happening now is purely out of, um, because of the economics of the technology. We have the technology adoption curve and, um, solar is, solar is the cheapest source of, of energy. Photons are free and super abundant. So I am just helping society capture the value of photons.
Speaker: I love that. I mean, I, I, I, um. Photons are free. That would look good on a t-shirt for sure. And I haven't checked your, uh, MERT out, but I, you know that, that's a free [00:02:00] suggestion for you.
Speaker 2: Thank
Speaker: you. Um, the, the, uh, you said at an interesting intersection of clean tech consulting media and ai, could you give us a bit of your origin story and describe like what, what, what parts of where you're at kind of float your boat the most?
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's no accident that I work in technology. My dad is a geek for technology. He's a polymath, self-taught programmer, toxics, expert historian, journalist, and a very, uh, you know, kind of hands-on DIY techie. I turned out to not be as good. Some of those things as he was like, I tried programming. I wasn't a very good programmer.
I abandoned programming early in my college career and I gravitated to ecology. Um, which is, you know, systems thinking and the natural world and sustainability. But the threads that connect my careers and interests [00:03:00] are technology, sustainability, and people. Obviously, if we're not doing it for people, what's the point?
We are humans and we have grown an economy that is very good for humans in many ways, and in some ways not so good. Right. We have created, um, externalities like air pollution. Like toxic waste, like CO2 in the atmosphere that's now causing runaway climate change. And we have to be very careful about, you know, how we're using technology for the betterment and potentially for our downfall.
And that's also where AI comes in. AI is technology, artificial intelligence. I got interested in, in, in AI back in 2012 when Nick Bostrom wrote Super Intelligence, a very, very good book, which still to this day is a great book on the subject. And he is a technologist, a statistician, also a philosopher. But, but you know, I, I remember distinctly writing an email to my [00:04:00] father about the book saying.
This is worse than climate change or global warming. And the referring to the, the takeoff, what we call the takeoff in, in artificial intelligence, where it achieves super intelligence and potentially far exceeds our, uh, our humanity and basically no longer needs us or necessarily cares about us. We are, as many people have said before me, we're just like cats or cockroaches to the super intelligence and it doesn't have to wanna harm us to do tremendous harm.
And it turns out that the odds are quite good that it could do a lot of harm. So anyway, it's, it's an amazing time that we live in aj where we are now masters of the universe in so many ways, but we could potentially become slaves to the technology that we invented.
Speaker: Uh, I, I think you're exactly right. Uh, you know, it's, it's interesting how you are.
Origins kind of parallel [00:05:00] mine in so many ways. I mean, I, I, I, um, I got into software and computers because of my father. I studied mechanical engineering because that's what my father is, he's an me. And I decided to, uh, follow in his footsteps. And when, when I was a kid, all I wanted was an Atari 2,600. So I could play games with my friends and my dad kept on saying, no, no, no.
I kept asking for it in one day. It wasn't even my birthday. He brings home a Commodore Vic to, and he teaches himself how, how to program in basic. And he gets me a subscription to Computes Gazette Magazine, which has printouts of code. And here I am hammering it in. And what he does though, is he automates engineering computations that, um, he and his colleagues were doing at, um.
At the office manually by hand with a slide rule. And he automates everything so he can do in about 10 [00:06:00] minutes with, um, with this piece of software that he created, what his colleagues would take two weeks to do. And he scared the bejesus out of him. But I suppose I also credit him with kind of getting me into the, the code automation space.
But, you know, getting back to why you do what you do, it's, it's, it seems really centered around humanity and trying to fundamentally better humanity as a whole. And you're right, I mean, I, I I AI certainly as it's been portrayed, um, by cer cer certain people and, uh, you know, and in documentaries like Terminator, uh, has some potential downsides.
Um, it also has some potential upsides, and I think we are, we have a front row seat to see what's what, to see where things lead. But ultimately, you know, do you center your perspective on creating value [00:07:00] fundamentally around creating value for humanity as a whole? Or is it much more Is, is it, is, is that the source of your kind of main passion and everything else drives from that?
Or am I not getting that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like to say it's a both. And I, I am a business consultant. I work with small business owners mostly in the solar and battery space, but I'm also on a mission to create a safer, healthier future for humanity. Clean energy is absolutely safer and healthier at scale than our current system of burning fossil fuels or even using nuclear power for grid energy.
And just like you know, we didn't stop using whales because we ran out of whales. We discovered a better technology called fossil fuels. Uh, so we didn't have to kill whales for whale [00:08:00] oil. And we moved on and whale hunting became a thing of the past. And now we're going through a similar transition. And, and I recognize that it is an important transition for humanity.
Uh, I noted today on the clean power Hour that China is installing wind and solar. 8.5 times faster than the United States is today. And there's a reason for that. They recognize that it has an economic advantage. If you have the technology to capture free wind and solar, it's gonna be a good thing for your economy.
And so I'm always looking for ways to bring it back to economics because what actually happens in the real world has a lot to do with economics for better or worse. Um, so it is hard sometimes I think, AJ to rise above the fray and take a, a grand perspective on, well, we really need to be careful about our future as a species.
And [00:09:00] AI has, has really forced many of us to. To zero in on techno, on that technology lens right now, because AI is a greater threat probably than most other technologies. Nuclear weapons are another one, of course, that are just right there and could easily snuff us out as a species. Um, so I don't know if that answers your question.
Speaker: Oh, well, I mean, it's, it's one more, it's one more threat of our own creation that could potentially wipe us out. But again, it's just one more in a growing list. So at, at some point, you know, certain things happen that can make you wonder as a species, do we deserve to live? I mean, I hope so. I, and, and I'm, I'm hopeful for the future, but, um.
Oh, at the same, at the same time. I've been in business for 26 years. I mean, you know, we're all capitalists here. This, this is the system that we must embrace in order to e [00:10:00] in order to create value fundamentally. But the economics are only a key part of it. I mean, you know, if, if, if, if, if, if we wanna succeed at anything larger, the economics of whatever that system is have, have, have to work.
Now we can make them work through a government policy, tax policy, various other things, but these are the tools, these are the economic tools that, that we as a society or as a government can, can, can certainly choose. But the, you know, let's get a little more granular here. So, you know, the Clean Power Hour is focused on people actually building the energy transition and not just talking about it.
There's no shortage of people talking about various things, you know, what did you see in the market that that, that kinda made that distinction so important? Um, know, it's like, to put it another way, when you engage with, um, with a client or when, when a clean tech or a solar company comes to you for help, [00:11:00] when, at what stage of their development are they typically, and how do you decide, do you wanna engage with them?
I mean, what do you think about, what do you, what do you, what do you factor in, in, in, into that decision?
Speaker 2: I mean, I use various measures. You can look at a company's revenue and say, well, I tend to be really good when companies are in the five to $50 million range in revenue. Or a certain headcount. Mm-hmm.
I also am always looking for entrepreneurs and owners and operators who I believe in, who I believe can be successful and take things to the next level. Because if I'm not 10 xing my value, this is a money for value equation. Basically what I do and the, the only reason companies will keep me coming back is if I am returning, uh, on that investment that they're making in me and at face [00:12:00] value.
I, I like to say to them, I will hope you go twice as far on this journey into, call it large commercial, industrial, solar and batteries than you would on your own. You'll get there fine. On your own.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker 2: Without Tim Montague, my goal is to get you there twice as fast as you would, and then ultimately. In terms of economic benefit to the company, I, I try to, to 10 x that whatever the investment they're making in me, I'm trying to give them 10 x in return.
Does it always work exactly that way? No, absolutely not. There are unexpected speed bumps along the way, but if I am, if I, and, and it's pretty easy for me to recognize AJ when I can add value and when I no longer can or can't at all. And, and that's an, so the, that stage gate, so to speak, is, is usually pretty straightforward if they, you know, if I like them and they like me and they have [00:13:00] enough resources to onboard me, then we're off to the races for a period of time.
And every trajectory is slightly different. There's no one playbook or one mountain that we climb together. Um, but it generally does work. And, and that's the beauty of it. I, you know, it is gratifying when you can see success tangibly. They're get, they're winning bigger projects, they're seeing more success, they're growing.
That's very gra uh, gratifying.
Speaker: I, I totally get you. Um, so, so the, the, there has to be a personality fit. You have to believe in you, you have to believe in the leadership for you to, to, for you to be confident that a customer's going to be able to get a 10 x return on what they invest in. You, you know, you might be able to give them the right ball, but you need confidence in, in, in them that they'll be able to run with it.
And I imagine for sure that's much more [00:14:00] of a personal connection. Yeah. You know, uh. We've, we have both earned our, our gray hair the hard way. No doubt. And definitely I've gotten to a point in, um, in my life and, and in my career where I will not work with, um, jerks to use a mild term. Life is too short. I will not do it.
And, um, after all the scars that we've all learned over the years, life is too short there. So I I, I, I totally get you. Now, after you engage, you know, as an expert in your field, part of your job, and, uh, and, uh, part of my job in, in my domain is we have to get deep into things. We have to crawl into the sewers.
We have to lift up the, we have, we have to lift up the rocks, shine a bright light underneath, see what comes crawling out. Oftentimes entrepreneurs other, um, other folks at a company either [00:15:00] don't know to do that or are just scared of doing that, or don't wanna learn how to kind of crawl around a sewer.
And that's where expertise really comes into play. So, you know, uh, in the clean energy space, what do you find under those rocks deep in the sewers that are holding your clients back?
Speaker 2: There's an expression I like, which is strong convictions loosely held. Many people have strong convictions strongly held, and that generally is not going to serve you in business or in life because mostly we do not know what we do not know.
And so when opportunity knocks and people who know different other things than you do give you those gifts. What you do with them and how you do with them matters a lot. For example, you know your [00:16:00] organizational structure may have worked for a certain period of time and gotten you where you are, and there's value in that.
But if you're not willing to let go of that structure and modify it as you're growing into larger projects, one of my best examples is project management. You can do residential solar with very few project management skills. Those projects can be managed by a field supervisor. They're not that complicated.
They're fairly short-lived. There's a lot of characteristics in a commercial project. They're much longer lived. There's many more stakeholders. It's much more complicated and. Without robust project management, you're gonna fall flat on your face very quickly and have projects that stall are unprofitable or outright failures because you're always between a rock and a hard place.
Right? You've given [00:17:00] a price to a customer and said, I'm gonna build this project for you at X dollars.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: And then you have to deliver that on price, but also profitably for yourself so that you can grow and thrive. Right? Sure. And it's very easy to give the wrong price or deliver the wrong goods, so to speak, in a way that makes the project unprofitable.
And we see a lot of blood in the water, in solar construction. Even companies that were around for more than a decade have gone extinct in the last couple of years for various sundry reasons. The two biggest being greed and mismanagement. And so you can lead a horse to water, but you can't always make 'em drink.
And, um, you know, every company is gonna have a different flavor of stuff under the rocks. And some of it's, some of it's, you know, gold [00:18:00] and some of it's, you know, garbage that needs to be discarded and moved on away from. And, and a company's ability to do that, to grab onto the gold and let go of the garbage really does make a, a big difference between those that are gonna, you know, thrive and grow more quickly and those that are gonna struggle and perhaps not survive at all.
Speaker: And so I guess that goes back to your core, core principle of, um, s strong beliefs loosely held. You need enough flexibility. Enough humility to be able to make some of these adjustments and, um, have you, well, I have you run across leadership that is, um, won't listen and had to walk away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course you do run into leadership teams that you recognize after doing some work with them that they're just not [00:19:00] going to be able to move the ball down the field.
And it's better for everyone involved, honestly, uh, because they're gonna feel like they're hitting their head against the wall if they're not able to grab onto the nuggets that you are giving them and vice versa. It's not gonna be gratifying or really useful, uh, for anyone involved down, you know, six months.
Two years, five years into the future. So that is just part and parcel of being a business consultant. Mm-hmm. That you will have to walk away from some of opportunities that initially seemed like gems and turn out not to be. So, but more than often, more often than not, I am good enough at, at, you know, having a, a good sixth sense in knowing who is going to, is gonna be able to work successfully with me.
Speaker: Well, you know, the project management is how many of these [00:20:00] challenges that your, uh, clients faced are, are with kind of CRI construction management at the end of the day, are many of these projects are, are most of these, are most of these clients? I mean, um. Fundamentally in the solar construction business or in the clean power construction business.
And how much of that discipline needed is kind of generalized to construction and how much is very specific to clean power?
Speaker 2: There are a lot of similarities between general construction and clean energy construction. You're, you know, you're building stuff in the built environment. It's, it's got three dimensions. It's got parts and pieces.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker 2: There's electricity.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Um, but solar has obviously some unique aspects. The good news is it's a lot simpler to build a solar facility than it is to build like a building.
There are many fewer [00:21:00] elements. The system is just simpler. And so some people come to me and they. You know, our kind of eyes wide open feeling like commercial solar is super complicated. And I say, well look at a university campus or a convention center or a hotel that's complicated and be happy you're not building that.
Um, and I have nothing against being a good general contractor and building those things. Also, I'm not an expert in those things. I'm an expert at commercial industrial solar. So you have to pick your battles and technology is a big piece of it. And being willing to evaluate and reevaluate your technology stack.
Mm-hmm. Because you can really be weighed down using a stack that is full of legacy systems, which. You know, it's, it's, it boggles the mind, aj, how some [00:22:00] technologies have infiltrated and persist. Uh, the, my favorite company to pick on is Microsoft. Okay. And I, I don't think that Microsoft makes best of breed software in my, in my opinion, do I use Microsoft tools I do in my daily work?
And so nobody has managed to completely disrupt Microsoft. So kudos to them. But there's a, there's a myriad of softwares that you could use and some companies won't even go on the journey to find out what else is out there because there's constantly new tools. And that's one of the reasons I'm a tech stack consultant.
'cause I love technology. I'm not always saying use the latest and greatest, but use, use something that's very good and efficient and cost effective and going to get you there faster on the journey you're on.
Speaker: Of course. And, and, and in that sense there is no, there is no difference really between constructing a physical product or constructing a software product.
I've been in the [00:23:00] software space since I was 10, I guess, and, and had modular since, uh, what for the last 26 years. And I certainly don't look to the software world for inspiration. I look to the physical world, you know? 'cause when you are engineering a product, you need the same discipline whether you are building a software product or a physical product.
And that is, that's been a core passion of mine for years and years. And, and I've kind of brought that perspective that, you know, like novel ideas like design something before you build it, right? These are just some kind of fundamental things that, that to many in the software world, they seem to have forgotten that and are much more likely to go from an idea, well, they used to go from an idea to a whiteboard.
Now they go from an idea to a prompt. And, uh, nothing is more constant than, than change in the space. But the kind of combination of that combination tech stack, hardware, software, [00:24:00] and certainly ai, uh, AI models now, I, I, I can completely understand is critical to. Efficiently delivering value out to the end customer in a particular market segment.
Right. And with your expertise in, in the solar stacks. Oh, just, just, just a quick question, um, is, is your focus in a, in a solar, principally on, uh, photovoltaic solar or also thermal generation?
Speaker 2: Yeah, good question. Very focused on photovoltaic, PV eclipsed thermal. Maybe 15 years ago, just out of the economics, I grew up doing solar thermal in my backyard, and I have great respect for the ability to create hot water or, or hot fluids.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: And there is a resurgence of modern day thermal technologies at this time. But, but anyway, uh, making electricity with sunlight is, is absolutely the most common [00:25:00] form of, of, um, clean energy that we see in the built environment today.
Speaker: I mean it to, to, to kind of expand on that, um, what do you think are the major hurdles.
Facing your, uh, your, uh, your US clients when it comes to scaling out PV solar? I mean, a lot has changed in, in terms of government policy, in terms of the economics, um, of where the, where various panels and other infrastructure components are ACT, are actually man, are actually manufactured. Can you speak to, to, uh, that a bit?
Speaker 2: So, in the United States, the solar PV industry is very geographic. We have hot markets, uh, medium, cool and cold markets. We here in Illinois have a hot market because of state incentives, which shorten the payback period. So if you are a consumer or a business owner and you install solar on your [00:26:00] facility or your house, you'll see.
A positive ROI on that project in say four to six years. Hmm. If you go to Arkansas or you go to Louisiana or Tennessee, we don't have those incentives in those geographies and the payback period is much longer. And so there is an industry in those markets. It's much smaller and it doesn't mean it's not a good industry and there are some wonderful installers and, and developers in those markets.
It's just smaller and it's going to grow more slowly. We have very cheap energy in the United States in general. If you go to Europe, it's two x sometimes four x and that is a barrier for the energy transition. We're paying a price mind you, by burning natural gas and oil and coal.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: Um. But there's also, that is also a barrier to [00:27:00] entry that we have cheap subsidized fossil fuel, grid power or nuclear power, which is also subsidized in various sundry ways.
And, and those can be a significant barrier to entry. The industry grew up first in, on the East coast and the West Coast, California, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, where energy was expensive and policies tended to be more progressive and forward thinking, and now they've trickled into the Midwest.
And we have a few states that are, that are growing quickly now in the Midwest. And in 10 years it'll be everywhere. It it, that's just how technology kind of flows into a, a geography. But it is, it is, uh, challenging if you're in a smaller market.
Speaker: Sure,
Speaker 2: and you have grand ambitions. My, my advice to my clients in that case is to work in multiple geographies, and that's very doable as a construction [00:28:00] company.
So don't, don't just stay in Louisiana or Tennessee. Consider bridging into other, nearby, hopefully, markets that are more lucrative.
Speaker: Hmm. Have you seen, um, any, any shift recently in solar demand? Uh, in say the last five weeks or so? I mean, something's been going on for five weeks, we don't need to talk about, but, um,
Speaker 2: well, certainly in the last six months there's been, you know, energy prices have been going up and.
So when electricity becomes more expensive, consumers feel it in their pocketbook and solar becomes more of a consideration depending on where you are and how long you're gonna be in your, in your home or your building. So that is kind of, we, we in the, in solar are kind of giddy that it's now a dining room conversation for many families.
And it does make it easier [00:29:00] when everyone's talking about the, the price of electricity and the, and the price of energy. Um, but there, there, there are many. Forces. And there are also countervailing forces that are not so friendly. You know, the phase out of tax incentives, for example, that's happening is causing a mini boom because timelines have been compressed and accelerated to take advantage of those incentives.
But then there's gonna be a bust in 2028. There's gonna be a lot of blood in the water in the solar industry, a lot of bankruptcies, a lot of mergers and acquisitions. We'll be fine as an industry. Every industry goes through ups and downs. We call it the solar coaster. In the solar industry, we're about to go through a major down, but right now we're riding, uh, a wave of growth.
Speaker: Why in 2028 specifically is are things gonna crack
Speaker 2: the, it's the, the end of the phase out of the investment tax credit, which is a 30% tax credit. It could be as high as [00:30:00] 60% in some scenarios where you have a perfect storm of low income, um, using Made in America equipment, gives you a 10% outer working in an energy community, meaning, uh, former coal mining for example, or oil drilling territory is an energy community.
You can get extra incentives. Anyway. The Biden administration created some very juicy incentives, uh, under the Inflation Reduction Act. Those are now being taken away from us.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker 2: And that is going to cause a, a bit of a bust for a period of time. What In the end, it, it, the contraction is healthy. It we get less fat.
Good companies will survive and we're here for the long run. Sure. There is no, there's, there is nothing that is going to disrupt solar and batteries. That, that's on the horizon. Maybe, maybe fusion. Okay. Fusion ca has the promise of generating a lot [00:31:00] of energy. The only question is at what, at what economics.
There's no question that we will crack the code. The sun cracked the code, uh, some millions of years ago. And if the sun can do it, then we could do it too here on earth in a, in a miniature version. Right. And get energy from matter. Um, yeah. That's totally theoretically feasible, but will it be economic is another question.
Speaker: Yeah. I, I, I. There are some breakthroughs that still need to be discovered. A few years ago, I got very excited about, um, uh, Lockheed Skunkworks getting into the fusion space. Yeah. And their, their, and their focus was on developing a very small Tomac.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Um, that you could put, that you could basically size a fusion reactor to fit on the back well, to really fit inside of a shipping container.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker: And the initial application was supposed to be military, which I get
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: But that was shelved [00:32:00] after a decade. Um, so there's a joke that, uh, fusion is right around the corner, but it's been around, it's been right around the corner for the last 40 years. So,
Speaker 2: yep.
Speaker: I, I, you know, I hope that it happens, but someone smarter than me once said, hope isn't a strategy.
So, I mean, when, when I hear, uh, folks in the AI space talk about fusion as the answer to power generation for, uh, data centers, like that's a nice thought. Maybe get a little more pragmatic. Um, yeah. Maybe smaller modular fision reactors, but again, those aren't quite a thing yet, but hopefully they will be.
I, I, um, getting back to, uh, something here, um, and pardon my, pardon my ignorance around this, but so many of the business challenges that I see out there in multiple industries really come down to packaging, packaging a particular product, a particular solution offering either financially or [00:33:00] physically.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Now in the, in the PV space. Is it just, uh, uh, is there anyone working on more centralized generation distributing, um, solar power through the existing grid, but, but not, uh, but centralizing the actual panel installation anywhere or economic Oh, yeah. Just not work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Large scale solar is happening.
It's the largest segment of the PV industry by far on a, you know, kilowatt, kilowatt hour basis. It's probably 60% of the installed solar on an annual basis. Now in the United States, states like Texas, uh, have surpassed California as the largest. Single state for PV installations because of utility solar, there's not a lot of what we call distributed generation, meaning rooftop solar.
Right, right. In Texas, there is a rooftop market in Texas, but it's [00:34:00] relatively small compared to other places. But there's a massive large scale solar and wind. Texas's grid is now 50% wind and solar
Speaker: Really?
Speaker 2: And Wow. And most consumers have no clue about that if they don't live in Texas and don't drive into the rural parts where they see these, you know, the, the, the thing you need for large scale solar is cheap real estate, and we have gobs and gobs of cheap real estate in the United States.
We're, we're a massive country. We only need 1% of the landscape, AJ to completely green the grid. And then maybe another 1% of, or let's say 20% of the built environment meaning rooftop solar on what's already got built environment on it. So it's not a big impact on the landscape as a whole to green the grid and, and that, and that's why, you know, I and many others are so excited about PV because it truly could save millions of lives if we stop burning coal and natural [00:35:00] gas and oil to some extent for energy generation.
And eventually for transportation. We could save millions of lives and avoid things like conflicts over oil, which we've seen historically are definitely a thing.
Speaker: They are, they are most definitely a thing that I think most of us haven't spent enough time thinking about, but now we certainly are. Um, y you know, have you gotten involved in any utility scale solar projects yourself?
Speaker 2: Not directly. I've, I've looked at. Some projects. I did work for a construction company for about a year that was bridging into the large scale utility space. The company was going through an acquisition at the time, and that was very, very messy. And, and so nothing really panned out there for me personally.
Um, and I see the projects and I've assisted, uh, in a project here in Champaign County that is a 1500 acre project. It's a 150 megawatt [00:36:00] utility solar farm to the east of Champaign near Sydney, Illinois. And that project took about six years from, you know, when they really got site control to. Uh, getting under construction.
It was, it was a very lengthy process, but, um, uh, you know, I was quite intimately involved in aspects of talking with the developer and assisting the developer in bringing that project forward, which on a, on a strictly volunteer basis as a citizen of Champaign County. And it was, it was pretty fun.
Speaker: I bet.
I, I mean, you know, the, the one interesting aspect of this large scale solar is from a residential standpoint, it doesn't require any infrastructure. It doesn't require any significant investment or a long, or a long payback period from a residential standpoint. So it's, it, it's an interesting packaging question.
Um, so a, a few more questions for you. And on the, um, um, on the tech side, I, I've been reading a [00:37:00] lot about pite. And the impact on the improved efficiency that it can have for PV panels. How, how real or significant do you think that technology is going to is, is, is going, is going to, to, is going, is going to be over the next few years?
How big of an impact do you think that's that, that, that, that is gonna have in the space?
Speaker 2: So there's no doubt that PAVs skies are going to be a thing?
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: Uh, i, I do a news roundup every other week with a gentleman named John Weaver, who's a journalist and a solo professional, and he's particularly interested in PAVs guides.
And, uh, we see some early projects, uh, at small utility scale happening using PAVs guide solar panels. These are so-called tandem. Panels because they layer different technologies. Perovskite being one and then photovoltaics being another. Parasites are fundamentally different than, uh, silicon-based [00:38:00] photovoltaics.
And not to be confused with thin film. And parasites can be used with thin, thin film as well.
Speaker: I'm right.
Speaker 2: So layering technologies is, is the, is the approach that's being taken by the manufacturers and these r and d facilities and it's happening, will it supplant Traditional photovoltaics completely at some point is completely to be determined.
Pob skates tend to degrade faster than photovoltaics, and so. Figuring out the chemistry and the material science of keeping that technology viable for 25 years is a nut that is being cracked as we speak. Um, there was a project we reported on in China that required a 25 year warranty on the solar panels that used per offsite.
And, and so China is incentivizing r and d and uh, implementation of PAVs skate solar. That isn't happening in that way yet in the United States, but there's no doubt that it, you know, [00:39:00] probably will. And is it gonna be transformative? Probably not. It's, it's, it's, it's interesting and maybe a good thing, I, I don't have enough information at this time to, to really say one way or the other.
There is a cautionary tale with perovskite is that, in that they tend to use the element lead in the, in the technology. And as you know, lead is toxic to humans and other living things. And so. When you think about billions and billions of solar panels that contain lead being put out there, we just have to make sure that we have strict rules about end of life and how to safely handle those materials.
Speaker: Understood. I mean, the, the, the entire lifecycle needs to be con considered. Certainly. So are most commercial PV panels, do they, I mean, do they have a 25 year lifespan? Generally?
Speaker 2: Yes. That's a, that's pretty much a given now, and they degraded about half a percent. A very high end solar panel, what we call premium technology would degrade at a quarter of a [00:40:00] percent per year.
So you're, you're getting it generally, uh, 90% after 20. 25 years of what you did on day one between 80 and 90%. So it's very long lived, very robust technology, but it's been around since the fifties. So we, it's gone through a very significant S-curve and we're now at the top and it's awesome toted in terms of efficiency, but it's also very robust.
Speaker: Excellent. Um, how AI is certainly taking the world by storm. And yes, it might be the end of us, but it might also be, uh, helpful and in, um, our own approach to, uh, in our own approach to it. We've been very careful, uh, as we still believe in timeless principles. And I, I, I, um. I am a bit skeptical on whether we will achieve a GI, I don't think LLMs and scaling them up is gonna get us to a GI, but, um, [00:41:00] we are moving in that direction.
So I'm, I'm, I'm trying to be very pragmatic about it and challenging my, myself and my, and my team to try to leverage AI in such a way that it truly creates measurable, tangible value in every aspect of the product engineering lifecycle. I mean, so that, that mindset, that structure that I'm trying to build to, uh, uh, bring to the AI question is really designed to extract value from it and, and, and, and, uh, in ways that we can tangibly measure.
From your perspective, in your, in your, in your space, where have you leveraged AI to maximum effect when it comes to value creation? Where do you think it holds the most promise? Um, uh, to, to bring either additional economic or, or physical or expansions access to your space?
Speaker 2: Yeah. AI is definitely an accelerant, and you can accelerate [00:42:00] many business processes if it can be, um, automated or semi-automated.
The, you know, you hear a lot about agentic ai
Speaker: mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: With human supervision. The, the, the fully autonomous AI is not quite here yet. The day will come, is it two years or 20 years? Nobody knows. And what I find quite interesting is that many of the. Experts say, well, we're probably within a couple of years now, many of them have vested interests in, you know, attracting consumers and investors.
And so you have to take some of what they say with a certain grain of salt. But I certainly have witnessed that we can do things faster, better, cheaper. And this includes project management, it includes bidding. On projects and you know, 'cause wherever you're using software tools, you can use [00:43:00] ai. Right? And, and now we're on the, on the verge of being able to create digital employees basically.
So imagine an army of estimators today, estimating work or project managers managing work tomorrow we can have digital versions of those employees that are doing things 24 7. And then of course you can create digital copies of them and have millions of them doing and, and that does scale in some important ways.
When done well, could it also be a double edge and create problems? For sure. You have to keep humans in the loop and you have to work with qualified. Professionals who know what they're doing. Um, yeah. But I think that, I think that AG agentic AI is, is here to stay and hopefully we can, you know, do good with it and, and avoid any catastrophic outcome.
I'm, I'm, that's why I got certified as an AI consultant though, is I, I believe in the [00:44:00] power of ai. Mm-hmm. And, and I also believe that we need to, you know, put guardrails on it.
Speaker: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it, I think the power is undeniable, but I, I, the, and the age agentic approach to packaging and leveraging LMS is the right way to extract maximum value from them.
But the, the, everyone that I've talked to on, on this podcast, other industry leaders who have embraced AI fully. 2 0 1, the, the, the core constraint is that in the hands of an expert, they can create t tremendous value. It is, it is not a replacement for expertise. But as you laid out the, this is another way of solving a classic question of workflow automation.
You have a process you are doing manually now. Can [00:45:00] it be automated? And in the past that automation has always been fully deterministic, right? There's an algorithm, you, if you give it a certain input, you will always get a certain output. LLMs are, are not deterministic by nature.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And I think. I, I heard someone say that, um, this was ridiculous.
They've got fif, they, this was, um, a CFO of a large company said that, um, yeah, we have, we, we, we, we have 50,000 employees, 20,000 of whom are agents. And I'm sorry, this is just sheer idiocy because if you are going to look, we agree. AI is powerful. It can create value, it can amplify expertise, it can automate tasks with guardrails.
But to understand at, at the heart of all of these models are LLMs, LLMs are inherently just by their sheer design. They have [00:46:00] no intrinsic knowledge of truth, of math, of the laws, of physics, really anything else. They are reflection of their training data. If you want to anthropomorphize them, what do you call, uh, a being who's empty on the inside, but knows how to mimic things on the outside, you call them a sociopath.
In addition, every LLM, and this is something intrinsic will hallucinate. If you ask it a question outside of its core training space, it will hallucinate with the same amount of authority in terms of how it provides an answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, then if it gave you the right answer. So again, if, if, if, if you wanna carry this further, uh, a agent is a sociopath on drugs agents.
Uh, so sociopaths on drugs can do tremendous amounts of work with the right structure around them.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And as long as the expectations are managed well, and [00:47:00] again, this is kind of where I'm, I'm, I'm searching. For ways of leveraging AI to maximum effect, um, to create real value and also mitigate risk, because there is risk there, right?
And just having a human in the loop isn't gonna solve it. I, I, I, I, I was talking to a someone a couple weeks ago who, who thought that that perhaps, um, alright, you know what, for um, every 10 agents I have writing code, I'll, I will have one real engineer reviewing the code. I'm thinking, um, that's just not going to work.
Um, the agents might be producing 10,000 lines of code a day. Is your, is your human engineer really going to review all of that? And this is where things kind of go into the, into the land of philosophy. Like, do you need to know what's in there, what these agents are actually producing? Or not. And where I am, and again, maybe I'm a Luddite and maybe, um, this will change over time, uh, once I see the [00:48:00] actual proof.
But at the end of the day, our, our clients reach out to us because we earn their trust. We advise our clients to use certain technology stacks, architectures, approaches, metrics, because they, they can trust that these things will work. And trust is at the core of all of this. So if we can get to a point where we can trust the output, and we are leveraging it very effectively in plenty of use cases where that can be the, uh, case, I think we can get there.
But in the, are there any specific, um, you know, innovative areas, uh, in the solar space where you see AI as being particularly effective above and beyond kind of traditional automation techniques?
Speaker 2: Nothing that really blows my mind. It's still very early days.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: I would point you to a guest that I just had on the show [00:49:00] named Jesse England, and he's doing a lot of work in the construction space, and I'm happy to introduce you guys, but, you know, uh, what, when you were, when you were talking about AgTech ai, I was reminded that, you know, we use elements of full self-driving vehicles in most of our day-to-day now to more or less extent.
Right. Um, and we are putting our lives in the hands of those computers that have computer vision and are trying to avoid accidents and running over pedestrians to, to greatly a you. To large, to a large extent, they're doing this successfully. They're not perfect. They're not a hundred percent perfect, but they are very good.
And the day will come when they are better than the average human. Um, so that's a good case in point I think, where, yeah, it's pretty crazy to think about a world full of [00:50:00] self-driving vehicles, but when it's fully autonomous, it truly is safer because then the vehicles are talking to one another and sensing one another much faster than humans can.
Like we use our eyes and our ears, but, but a computer can talk to another computer, thousands, maybe millions of times faster than a human can talk to another human.
Speaker: It's an excellent vision. Absolutely. Yeah. I, it's an excellent vision. I, I,
and I hope we can get there, the. The thing that I think about in that particular context is, um, uh, you know what, there is, there are a lot of use cases, a lot of processes where being off, where if you do, if you can deliver plus or minus 5% the value, that's more than adequate. That's phenomenal. Say, when you're creating an estimate, when you are, I mean, [00:51:00] all kinds of business processes, all kinds of workflows where probabilistic outcomes with relatively moderate uncertainties are, uh, phenomenal.
So that can create a ton of value, but say, when applied to a full self-driving vehicle, uh, what if there's only a 1% chance that this vehicle will kill you when you get into it? Is that good enough? Is it 0.1%? 0.001%? Because again, at some point, like, you know, humans, I mean, there is a risk with a human behind a wheel as well, right?
So, so,
Speaker 2: oh yeah. 50,000 people a year, right? That's a lot of deaths. So I'm all four reducing that by 90%. Like that's the statistic that I hear, and I believe it. I don't think we're quite there yet, but within five years, um, you know, I, I plus freeing up the time, like I don't really wanna be the driver. If I can avoid being the driver, I wanna do that.
I would rather do other things. I'd rather [00:52:00] entertain myself or work on my phone or meditate or do you know, whatever.
Speaker: For sure,
Speaker 2: for sure. And driving is not the most interesting thing we do. So there's that freedom and, and you can think about many things in our lives, in our work lives that. Could be automated and probably will be someday.
The, the flip side of this is are we going to see massive economic disruption in unemployment, which is a prediction that many are making, and I don't have a good answer to how we solve that. You know, we talk about universal basic income. Is Donald Trump gonna give Americans who are disrupted by the AI UBI?
I don't see him doing that. And so then we have massive poverty and we're kind of back to where we were 500 years ago, which was the system, uh, that really didn't create, you know, global happiness per se, and we were driven to disrupt that.
Speaker: Yeah, I, I, I wish I could [00:53:00] predict the future. I, I, I've been particularly bad at that over the years, but what I do know, you and
Speaker 2: everyone else,
Speaker: well, what I do know is I've been at the automation game.
I've been in the co-generation space for a very long time. So 26 years ago, we got into this. And, uh, at this point with, with our tech platform, we have fully automated, uh, 80% of the process of building commercial software products and platforms in a completely deterministic, a hundred percent trustworthy way.
And now we are layering in agentic AI on top of that because we think we can get from 80% to 90%. Mm-hmm. Um, and the question I ask is, all right, look, if we can find a way to create more value. With less time and, and, and, and if, if, [00:54:00] and with less, then less risk. Why wouldn't we? If you, if you can, if you, if you can build a higher quality product faster and with and less expensively, why wouldn't you do that?
The, the emphasis is on higher quality. So I remember when I remember doing demos of our first version of our platform 25 years ago. I had engineers who saw hundreds of thousands of lines of code being a, being a generated, and they would come up to me after us that this scares the bejesus out of me.
Speaker 2: Mm.
Speaker: This I, this is gonna replace me. I'm like, here's a question. Have you ever known an employer to ever run out of work? No. They run out of time. They run out of people, or they run out of money, not work. Mm-hmm. So. If you can, if you can embrace automation. I mean, I, I, I think about people like Andrew Yang.
Mm-hmm. Who, I mean, look, I love math. I'm glad he loves [00:55:00] math too. But to be against automation, fundamentally, I'm sorry, that's to be against human progress. So if you can automate something, if you can do it safely, if you can do it more efficiently, why the hell wouldn't you? It's like getting in, uh, a car.
Uh, it is, it's like getting in a, a cab and the driver, uh, wanting the driver to take the scenic route in order to get to your destination, knowing that it's gonna be a higher rate. Which is honestly a lot of where generally software consultancy is landed. A lot of software consultants are, are, are incented to maximize billable time.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Not value creation. So I. I'm all in on the automation game, um, because it's a path to creating value, but again, only if you are creating real value and not anything artificial. But I'll get off of my, I'll get off of my, uh, soapbox now. Sorry about that. Um,
Speaker 2: it's [00:56:00] okay,
Speaker: Tim. Um, thanks for your time and thanks for joining us here.
Um, if there's, if, if there's any one takeaway you want to give to our audience, you want them to be thinking about, about solar, what would that be?
Speaker 2: It's not a green scam. It's, it's totally legit. We've been developing this technology for 70 years and it can make your life better, more affordable, and. Help save other people's lives. Like there's so many good things, you know, it's good for people, it's good for profit and it's good for planet. And that's, that's the kind of wins that I like.
Speaker: I love it. Profit planet people. Again, another t-shirt that I would happily buy on your merch store. Um, thanks very much. I really enjoyed our conversation. Um, I wish you all the best. [00:57:00]
Speaker 2: Thank you. It's really an honor and privilege. I really appreciate the conversation.