SunCast

A Powerwall delivery truck flipped. No fire. No smoke. Seemed safe. They tossed those Powerwalls into a landfill. Four days later—explosion! That incident didn’t just make headlines; it changed Tesla’s fire strategy. In this Tactical Tuesday, retired Battalion Chief Kathleen McCaffery explains how that one mistake led Tesla to create a Global Fire Liaison role—and why every developer, EPC, and AHJ...

This episode marks ten years of SunCast - and the return of its very first guest. In 2015, a young GTM Research analyst named Adam James joined host Nico Johnson for the debut episode exploring the rise of solar in Latin America. A decade later, Adam is a Partner at Energy Impact Partners and Chair of the Clean Energy Leadership Institute (CELI) . Together, he and Nico reflect on how far both they...

“Is your project really compliant?” That’s the billion-dollar question developers across the U.S. are asking as Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) rules tighten their grip on clean energy tax credits. If you are(were) banking on the ITC, PTC, or 45X, you can’t afford to miss this Tactical Tuesday deep-dive. The rules are shifting. Supply chains are murky. And guidance is still evolving. Host Nico Jo...

What happens when a builder and a coder decide to fix solar’s biggest disconnect? In this episode, SunCast host Nico Johnson sits down with Maksim Markevich and Ben Callam , the co-founders of PV Farm —a platform born from frustration with designs that look perfect on screen but fall apart in the field. Maksim, a self-taught engineer from Belarus, learned to code his way out of rebar spreadsheets...

Roofers are entering solar. Solar pros are adding roofing.   How are these trades getting the training & resources required to level up and provide the appropriate level of service to homeowners? Is the future of residential solar trades consolidating int a new kind of contractor? In this RE+ 2025 live session, Nico sits down with James Mason , VP of Renewable Energy at ABC Supply, to exp...

Did you know that more than 185,000 solar customers in the US have been abandoned by their installers? How will we take care of these “Orphaned” solar systems? Is this a golden opportunity or fool’s gold? Nick Sherman sees opportunity where most see chaos. As CEO of Energy Aid , he’s building a national brand in solar service—scaling faster than any of his installer-focused peers. While others rac...

Storage Isn’t Backup—It’s Infrastructure Wildfires, heat waves, and AI-fueled data centers are pushing our grid to the edge. The question is no longer whether we need storage—it's whether we're going to unlock its full potential. In this live episode from RE+, Nico is joined by two global leaders from Wärtsilä Energy— Tamara de Gruyter , President of Energy Storage, and David Hebert , VP of Global...

Why are millions of apartment rooftops still empty while single-family homes cash in on solar savings? Turns out it’s an accounting problem – a technicality known in industry jargon as the “split-incentive” and it’s keeping renters and property owners sidelined from benefiting from distributed generation on-site. In this episode, we sit down with Dover Janis , co-founder and CEO of Ivy Energy , to...

From firehouses to jails to major manufacturing hubs, Cherry Street Energy is redefining what it means to build a distributed power plant —and they’re just getting started. CEO Michael Chanin returns to SunCast to unpack Cherry Street’s explosive growth across the Southeast, including why customers trust them more than their actual local utilities, how hybrid systems are becoming the norm, and wha...

Landfill explosions, lithium-ion firestorms, and CIA briefings—today’s guest has seen it all - or so she thought! Kathleen McCaffery’s illustrious firefighting career includes crawling through rubble in Haiti, leading battalions as one of the first female fire chiefs in North America, and even rewriting Tesla’s global fire safety strategy. This episode takes us into uncharted territory as Tesla re...

More batter density = more value, right? Not so fast. In this episode, we challenge the hype around energy storage density—and reveal what really drives value for battery storage assets. At RE+ 2025, Nico Johnson got to connect with two powerhouse product leaders from Wärtsilä Energy Storage: Neha Sinha , Head of Hardware Portfolio, and Ruchira Shah , Lead for Software Product Management. Together...

1 in 5 solar panels are failing—and it’s not because of hail. A quiet reliability crisis is cracking open across the industry, and it starts with glass. In this eye-opening conversation, Nico Johnson sits down with Tristan Erion-Lorico (Kiwa PVEL) and Dr. Teresa Barnes (NREL) to uncover why glass breakage has become the #1 cause of solar module failure . Backed by PVEL’s latest reliability data, t...

Is the world’s most powerful energy data set hiding in plain sight? Justin Locke, former RMI leader and now Executive Director of Global Energy Monitor , joins Nico to uncover how real data —not just rhetoric—is shaping the future of global energy. If you've ever looked at a chart on coal retirements, gas pipelines, or solar growth, chances are it came from GEM. Or at least, the person who created...

The $2/Watt Challenge: Can We Get There? Is $2/watt solar a pipe dream—or a real target we can hit in the next few years? Patrick Crane , Global Head of Growth at OpenSolar (and solar pioneer since Sungevity), says not only is it possible, but we already know how to get there. In this conversation, Patrick breaks down the most bloated parts of the cost stack—from customer acquisition to permitting...

Why is solar so expensive in the U.S.? Nick Josefowitz has the receipts—and a plan to fix it. In this episode, we dig into one of the largest hidden reasons rooftop solar costs $35,000+ for the average American homeowner (while in Australia it's closer to $6K). Spoiler: It’s not the panels—it’s the paperwork. Nick is the founder of Permit Power , a nonprofit laser-focused on making solar faster, c...

Planning to attend NYC Climate Week? Already there!?  When Nico realized he had to make a last-minute trip to NYC this week during climate week, he reached out to two friends who could give him a solid education on what to expect (and where to focus) for this week’s NYC Week.  Whether you’re flying in from the West Coast or crossing borough lines, this episode is your essential survival...

Nearly 1 billion people still live without reliable electricity . Nedjip Tozun co-founded d.light to change that—starting with a $10 solar lantern and growing into one of the world’s most influential off-grid solar companies. Today, d.light has already impacted hundreds of millions of lives and aspires to reach 1 billion by 2030 , bringing affordable, clean energy to the people and places traditio...

The Wake-Up Call We Can’t Ignore Clean energy isn’t losing the economics game—it’s losing the political one. Jigar Shah returns to SunCast live at RE+ 2025 with an urgent message: the energy transition will stall unless we, as an industry, stop underestimating the role of political power . The economics are there. The technology is there. What’s missing? Unity, speed, and ground-level influence. T...

Straight from Day 3 at RE+ 2025, this replay of the PowerUp Live Morning Show and Daily Round Up wraps up an incredible week of insights from the clean energy leaders driving the industry forward. Nico Johnson, Lisa Ann Pinkerton, and Sylvia Leyva Martinez close out the final day with bold takeaways, surprising perspectives, and a few laughs. From the future of tribal energy to the flow of investm...

Straight from Day 2 at RE+ 2025, this replay of the PowerUp Live Morning Show and Daily Round Up continues our mission to bring you insights from the leaders shaping the clean energy transition. Nico Johnson, Lisa Ann Pinkerton, and Sylvia Martinez welcome industry voices who share fresh perspectives on the policies, technologies, and strategies pushing renewable energy forward. From SEIA’s advoca...

Straight from Day 1 at RE+ 2025, this replay of the PowerUp Live Morning Show and Daily Round Up brings you a fast-moving mix of leaders shaping the clean energy transition—from domestic steel to EVs, hydrogen, DG, big-grid storage, and much more. Nico Johnson, Lisa Ann Pinkerton and Sylvia Martinez welcome leaders, influencers and clean tech podcasters onto the stage. Here is who you can expect t...

“Storage Was Never Just an Add-On” What if we’ve been thinking too small about batteries? In this rebroadcast from RE+, Kiran Kumaraswamy , former VP of Growth at Fluence, makes a bold case for reimagining energy storage—not just as a renewable add-on, but as a foundational tool for grid transformation . Kiran breaks down how the energy storage sector evolved from supporting solar to replacing gas...

Heading to Las Vegas for RE+ 2025? This episode is your ultimate field guide. We’ve got the inside scoop from SunCast host Nico Johnson and some of the industry leaders shaping this year’s event—from Abby Hopper’s optimistic industry outlook to Jigar Shah’s no-nonsense advice for finding your tribe in the midst of uncertainty. You’ll also hear from RE+ content architect Kathy Schott , social media...

"You're not in the solar industry anymore." That bold declaration from Jigar Shah at RE+ 2023 sparked debate, shifted mindsets—and now, two years later, is being realized. Nico Johnson recently revisited the discussion with Jigar for a current-day check-in before diving into the full, original conversation that started it all. As the then-Director of the DOE Loan Programs Office, Jigar laid out a...

Is the U.S. solar manufacturing boom standing on a hollow foundation? In this live episode from PV ModuleTech USA, Nico sits down with solar industry veteran Arndt E. Lutz, a global exec who’s seen it all—from Germany’s early solar rise to hydrogen innovation and now leading EliTe Solar’s manufacturing efforts. Despite America’s massive build-out of module assembly plants, there's a gaping hole in...