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Jaime Smith, co-founder and managing director of Lodestar Energy, shares his experience and perspectives on solar energy. In this episode, he talks about how solar power works, challenges common misconceptions about solar, delves into community solar farms, and expresses his vision for alternative energy in the future.
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Climate Clear Episode 5
Alison: Hi, I'm Alison Gregory and you're listening to Climate Clear, powered by AreaHub. We help you discover climate and environmental issues in a clear, digestible way by talking to experts on these topics - all within 15 minutes.
Here with us today is Jamie Smith, co-founder and managing director of Loadstar Energy, a developer of commercial and public sector, distributed generation and small utility-scale solar projects. Jamie holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and he appreciates nature as evidenced by his personal beekeeping and his pollinator pathway efforts.
Jamie, thank you for joining us. Before entering the renewable energy industry, you held a variety of executive and general manager roles across companies from early stage to fortune 500. What sparked your interest in solar and what led you to create Loadstar energy?
Jaime: Thank you very much for having me today, Allison, really excited to be here. I was working for a home builder in Northern Virginia as a general manager around 2006-2007, and we were looking for ways to differentiate ourselves. The customers were coming to us really interested in us doing more about energy conservation and energy savings in their homes, and that got me down a path where I started doing research on that and looking at ways to make the houses more efficient. And I just, I really loved it. Consumers were responding in a really great way and asking us to do that.
I had an interesting career where I had been in these great roles among a bunch of different companies, but they were all disparate. And I didn't really have one industry that I was sort of deep in. So, I made a decision that I was going to dedicate my career to renewables. In 2009, I joined a company called Sun Edison. They were really instrumental in my development and my knowledge of solar energy.
In 2013, I met my business partner, Jeff Macel. From that initial conversation, we had started Loadstar energy within three weeks. And our premise at the time was, there was lots of money coming into the industry, but really not a lot of great projects being developed. So that was the premise then, and, and it still holds true today.
Alison: So before we deep dive into solar and more into your specific path, could you please explain solar energy to people who may be less familiar with it?
Jaime: Solar energy is a clean, renewable form of energy. We take the rays of sun and, through a solar panel, we take that energy and we convert it from direct current into alternating current that can be used to power all of our equipment and all of our electronics in our lives. The source of the energy is free to us because it's in the form of sunlight, but it is a challenge to capture it and there are inefficiencies in that.
Today, solar panels are only about 18% efficient, meaning they're only capturing about 18% of that energy.
So these can be put onto rooftops, they can be put on large ground systems, they can be put - actually there are floating solar arrays as well! And there's lots of different scales.
What my company, Loadstar Energy does, is what's called small utility-scale. So we're not on rooftops. We're on 20 - 30 acre solar farms. And that energy is typically being distributed in a community form to different people, and individuals. If you own a house and you can't put solar on your roof, you can buy a share of one of my solar plants, and that's called community solar or remote net metering, or virtual net metering (all terms you'll hear for what we do).
Alison: Well, I'm glad you brought up community solar farms, given that your company has numerous community solar farms. Can you explain to us what are the opportunities that community solar farms present and how do they differ from solar panels on someone's roof?
Jaime: When you put solar energy on your roof, you are netting the amount of energy that you use. Let's say you normally used a100 units of energy and the solar facility on your roof produces 20. Now, you're going to net 75 and you only need to buy from the utility 75 units of energy. That's called net metering or behind-the-meter solar. That's all of the rooftops and commercial building solar that you see going in around the country.
One of the other methods, which I described as virtual net metering or community solar, means that we go out and build solar in a field and we just push that energy back to the utility. But instead of the utility paying us for that energy, they actually spread that out among consumers.
And so we go out and find hundreds of individuals who maybe can't put solar on their roof, but are interested in participating, and they buy a virtual share of our solar facility and they get a discount on their energy bills through the production that's happening at the solar facility.
Alison: Is energy sourced from community solar farms currently available to everyone, if not, then who would be excluded? And is that a regional exclusion or some other basis?
Jaime: That's a great question. It is state-by-state and even further complicated in that it's utility-by-utility inside the state. So, here in Connecticut, we have two different utilities, Eversource Electric, and Avangrid. Each of them have different rules. So, Connecticut has rules about community solar, and then the utilities themselves might have separate rules around that.
In the Northeast, we have community solar available in Massachusetts. We have community solar available in New York. We have a form of community solar here in Connecticut. So it is a hyper-local business. And one of the challenges of being a solar developer is that you really have to understand the rules in incredible detail where you operate.
So, it makes it a very hard business to be a national solar developer because you just have to really understand the local rules around community solar, the local rules around permitting, and the local rules around interconnection. What are we trying to protect? In some places, we will have times of the year where we can't build because we're worried about bats. And, sometimes, we won't be able to build because we're worried about turtles. We have different setbacks from rivers, setbacks from streams, etc. So it really becomes very, very important that you're in the community and that you know that community.
Alison: It's interesting to hear about some of the challenges the industry faces, whether those are permitting differences that one must understand and navigate, or whether they're efficiency challenges. As we think about people's understanding and approach to the topics of solar, one of the things that I wanted to ask about was the various ways in which people may not understand solar.
In that respect, I wanted to delve into how many different views or, in some cases, misconceptions may exist about solar. For example, some people think that solar is quite expensive and/or unreliable. What are your thoughts about those views?
Jaime: Those are very interesting perspectives. What you're gonna hear me say is that it isn't an either/or when it comes to energy. We need all of it. We're gonna need wind. We're gonna need solar. We're gonna need natural gas. We're gonna need nuclear until we don't. We're gonna need to keep those facilities on until we've made transitions to renewable energy. We're gonna need coal where we have no other options. My view is we need every bit of it.
The more progressive parts of the country are studying the value of distributed energy and they are thinking in terms of: if you put energy closer to where it's used. So the old utility model was large plants that pushed energy out, and they were efficient to build but not efficient around how they supplied energy. But if you put energy in small amounts in lots of different places, there are some incredible benefits around the resiliency of the grid - which here in New England, we've had a lot of storms, probably in the country, but one of the challenges is the grid stability. Putting energy at a local level really hardens the grid and makes it more resilient. And so that's fantastic! Energy doesn't have to travel as far so there are fewer line losses. There are just tremendous benefits of distributing the energy locally.
Now, one of the keys to that is batteries, because as you mentioned Alison, one of the rubs against solar energy and wind energy is what is called intermittency - meaning some days the wind blows, some days the sun shines, and other days it doesn’t.
When you couple solar and wind with batteries, you really take away that argument. Those sources of energy become just as reliable as any other sources of energy because we can dispatch them when we need them. So to fulfill renewable energy's opportunity, we need to couple them with batteries.
When you look at them in a holistic way, distributed energy is very cost-effective and you look at it for all the reasons that I talked about. So that kind of counters those two arguments. But again, this notion that we should do one, not the other, that's a false notion right to begin with.
Alison: That makes a lot of sense. I think your point about the diversification of energy sources and the value of distributed energy is also really compelling. Since you're talking across a number of different types of renewable or alternative sources, could you share with us how you envision the future of solar energy, as well as other alternative energies? Are there any new technologies or developments that you're excited about or keeping an eye on?
Jaime: Well, I was just reading the other day that 20 to 25% of utility generation is sitting around for that 3% of the time when we have these massive peaks of demand - that hot summer day in July, when everyone turns their air conditioner on. We've got what are called peaker plants, and they're just as they sound, sitting around idle for 51 weeks a year and turning on for that one week a year.
That's incredibly inefficient, but that comes back to the old supply model of the utilities. I imagine, in the future, we're gonna have a very dynamic grid with sensors that are picking up, on the ends of the grid, what the demand looks like and are able to adjust very quickly - and not only adjust supply, but adjust demand.
There are parts of this country where you can sign on today to the utility, to be paid to be able to shut down part of your load, a part of your energy. In California, instead of building additional plants, they take thousands of residents and say, “I'll pay you a little bit each month. But when we have that super hot day, I want to be able to shut down your air conditioner or your dishwasher or your washing machine or curtail you.”
That's probably the right model for us, a model where we are affecting the demand as much as we're affecting the supply. And you're being paid to do that. I mean, they could say to you (and businesses have this all the time), “Instead of putting your washing machine on during the day, how about if I paid you $5 to only wash clothes at night when we have plenty of wind blowing or plenty of energy and we don't have demand?” You would probably sign up for that and that's gotta happen at a massive scale.
It's also gonna require incredibly dynamic metering. At the edges of the grid where all of us are using energy, we're gonna have to get very smart about how we're using that energy and that information is gonna have to get back to utilities. There's gonna be a completely different model which is gonna involve both supply and demand movements.
Alison: That's really compelling. I like the fact that you're trying to have us start to be creative and think about how we can adjust our own behaviors in ways that may start to move us away from having so many plants largely idle. To wrap this up, who should consider transitioning to solar as their main source of energy? And, which conditions would be optimal for them to do so?
Jaime: If it makes sense to put solar on your home because you've got an unshaded section of your roof, then you should be doing that. The economics make a lot of sense. There are lots of companies that can help you with that. But as far as being a hundred percent solar… There are remote places in the country that don't have access to the utility and the grids, those make a lot of sense, but I wouldn't recommend that we're going exclusively to solar.
I think solar is part of a broad mix of energy and it's an incredible one because it's got a zero-cost raw material. We don't have to pay for it. If you run a coal plant, you have to buy coal with wind and solar. What's compelling about solar is that it's a zero-cost source of energy.
We need to do a much better job of taking advantage of all the areas that we have that solar energy can be placed in that we're not using. For example, canopies over parking areas. We have an incredible number of parking areas around the country that are really being used for nothing other than put cars in them.
Canopies in parts of the country that are very hot are actually an advantage to the folks that are parking the cars, and in places where it snows, that can be an advantage as well. There was a study done recently, here in Connecticut, looking at how many places had over a hundred parking spots and there are 8,300 places in Connecticut with over a hundred parking spots. And we probably have less than 10 canopies in the state!
So it requires progressive policy-making to create the right incentives to get developers to focus on that because it's a little bit more expensive, but that's a great example of this untapped area where we could put solar on. And it would be a win-win for everyone.
Alison: That is a great example and I'll bet there are many other ones we could come up with if we all got creative. To close our session today, we were wondering if there's anything that you wanna mention that we haven't discussed yet.
Jaime: Just to emphasize the idea that with EVs coming and with the uses of energy growing, we're gonna need everything. And when listeners may hear people say, “We need this. Not that,” they should, in their mind say, “No, we need it all.”
There will be a time when we wanna phase out nuclear energy, but not until we've grown our renewable energy to the place where we can support all the needs that we have around energy in the country. I'm excited about the future of renewable energy! For the last year and a half, more renewable energy has been added than traditional forms. If you look at new energy being generated, wind and solar are dominating new energy and it's across the country in what are considered red states and blue states. So I'm really excited about that.
We need to continue our leadership role as a country. We need to invest in technologies, like batteries, that are gonna be critical. We need to be creative about finding those best uses of land, look for the landfills, cover the landfills with solar, cover the areas next to the highway, cover the area next to the wastewater treatment facility next to the cemetery. Those places where we're not gonna put homes and we're not gonna put traditional businesses (like the brownfields and the thousands and thousands of contaminated sites across the country)
We should be looking at all of those sites as potential opportunities to grow our distributed energy and grow our energy independence.
Alison: Thank you very much, Jamie, this has been incredibly informative and interesting, and we appreciate your sharing your perspectives and expertise with us.
You're listening to Climate Clear and we encourage you to check out AreaHub to learn about your area's climate and environmental health. Thank you all who are listening for joining us and tune in again for new episodes.