SunCast

Josh Porter and Nico Johnson, both veterans of the solar industry and long-time podcasters, discuss the evolution of the medium and its popularity. They both started their own podcasts at a time when podcasting was still in its infancy, and emphasize how the medium fosters genuinely authentic conversations and storytelling. In this live discussion, Josh & NIco talk about their experiences with...

Mohammed Abdalla, the founder and CEO of Good Faith Energy, is no stranger to adversity. His father died when he was nine, leaving his mother to rear five children. Mohammed, the middle child, used the childhood challenges to cultivate the grit, determination and fire that now serve him well as an entrepreneur.  After a disappointing early career experience in oil and gas — he said he was fir...

I’m no fan of the hype train and misdirection foisted upon us by much of the traditional fossil fuel industry. So, when I met Tucker Perkins, president and CEO of the Propane Education and Research Council (PERC), I was happy to “entertain” a phone call to hear why he believes renewable propane can be dubbed a clean and sustainable energy source. Truthfully, I had zero intention of ever having him...

It’s a holiday weekend, so I’ll keep the reading short for you. Every so often, I try to convene my close friends who are working in the trenches doing the guerilla and grass roots marketing helping our industry grow. Two-such folks are Tor “Solar Fred” Valenza, and Lauren “Windy Glick” Glickman, and I’ve truly come to admire and respect them both. I ask them a ton of questions in this conversatio...

Many folks have heard the term microgrid in the energy transition context, and today's podcast will give you critical insights about their use and potential. Our guest is Adrienne Pierce, CEO of New Sun Road, a Richmond, California-based for-profit public benefit company (PBC).  It’s really coincidental that this particular episode publishes the same week that >70K Northern CA residents ar...

Today's Tactical Tuesday gives you an overview of regenerative energy — a transformative new standard of excellence for solar power plant design, construction, and operations that normalizes regenerative agriculture practices on solar farm sites.  "If you’ve never heard about the amazing potential of regenerative agriculture and land use practices to naturally sequester a critical mass of CO2...

Fellow solar warrior and podcaster, Nate Jovanelly, took over the PowerUp Media Zone studio at RE+ to lead the Industry Pulse segment, with support from Enerflo, at Noon each day during the annual conference in September. The segment highlighted the leaders, trends & opportunities in the industry in 10-minute bits of advice and insight. In this compilation episode, we have pulled together seve...

Today's conversation is a wide-ranging look at how to provide reliable power using renewables while mitigating intermittency and helping Independent Power Producers (IPPs) deal with the annoying curtailment problem through novel software and hardware solutions. Been wondering when I’d do an episode on Bitcoin mining + Renewables? Buckle up and let’s roll. "Curtailment" occurs when a clean energy e...

Everyone talks about B2B marketing these days, often without a clear understanding of its meaning or importance. So today, we shine a light on business-to-business or B2B marketing to gain a better perspective on the term and, most importantly, strategies for maximizing your B2B renewable energy-focused marketing investments. Our conversation includes top renewable industry marketers Naveed Hasan,...

Homeowners are on a remarkable journey toward more convenient living through connected technology. Adopting things like smart thermostats, lighting, network cameras, door locks, and garage door openers is moving from an early market dominated by innovators and early adopters to the Early Majority — or mainstream — market. We're finally Crossing the Chasm, and today's guests have some relevant insi...

Jerry Coleman is a serial entrepreneur with a passion (and quite a track record) for developing and growing companies on a national scale.  Over the past 20 years, Jerry has co-founded and cultivated multiple real estate-related ventures throughout the US, including Invitation Homes, the $10Billion real estate juggernaut in partnership with Blackstone. So it was no surprise when he turned his...

Sylvia Leyva Martinez, a senior analyst in Wood Mackenzie's Power and Renewables team, and Shawn Rumery, senior research Director at the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), discuss significant trends in the U.S. solar market in this timely Tactical Tuesday. The quarterly SEIA/Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables U.S. Solar Market Insight is the longest-running solar industry trends report...

Solar industry leader and returning guest, Jim Spano, helped develop the solar market in the mid-Atlantic region — and now he's bringing a new innovative product to market. New York City-based Sol-REIT is a unique solar financing platform that aims to give developers a new option and keep more of the project for themselves while also providing much-needed scaleable financing to the middle market....

Matt Heider is CEO of Nautilus Labs, which is using artificial intelligence (AI) to create more efficient ocean commerce. While shipping is an adjacent category to our usual renewable focused podcasts, Matt has earned a spot. Before Nautilus, he built sales and account management systems at software startups that have grown to unicorns and worked for IBM on its famous Watson team. Now, he’s traine...

Welcome to another Tactical Tuesday on SunCast, where we bring you subject-matter expertise, deep insights, and content from our many live broadcasts and trainings. Today's episode is rebroadcast from the RE+ PowerUp Media Zone , a live production of SunCast Media. The Media Zone featured interviews with industry thought leaders, executives and founders to glean their insights about trends and for...

John Berger is a renewable energy veteran deep in the heart of “Energy” country, as we discussed back in Episode 465 . And he’s built more than one successful renewable energy company, but most of you will recognize him as the CEO of Sunnova Energy, the publicly traded solar giant that has helped usher in the modern residential solar revolution.  He founded Sunnova in 2012 and has served sinc...

Today's special edition podcast offers practical, tactical advice on getting the most from your customer relationships. Through an all-star panel discussion led by Bodhi CEO Scott Nguyen, you'll learn how to double the value of your solar customers through follow-on sales.  Join us for insights from Ryan Barnett, market development officer at Palmetto; Preston Booker, head of strategic accoun...

Piper Foster Wilder is the co-founder and CEO of 60Hertz Energy, the first maintenance software purpose-built for distributed energy resources (DER). DERs are physical and virtual assets deployed across the distribution grid, typically close to load and usually behind the meter, and used individually or in aggregate to provide value to the grid, individual customers, or both. Anchorage, Alaska-bas...

In today's Tactical Tuesday, we talk with Andy Redinger, head of the Utilities, Power & Renewable Energy Group at KeyBanc Capital Markets (KBCM).   KBCM is Cleveland-based KeyCorp's corporate and investment banking arm. It's North America's leading renewables project finance lender and provides services to clean technology firms in the power generation, smart grid, energy management,...

Hawaii native Aric Saunders is a clean energy champion well versed in reaching low to moderate-income communities, creating innovative products, and integrating storage into the grid. Aric is the executive vice president of sales and marketing for Electriq Power, a battery storage company in San Leandro, California. He joined the company as director of business development in 2017 to advise their...

Perhaps you’ve noticed, but over the past year, I've built a strong friendship with the folks at Sungrow, the leading global inverter solution supplier for renewables. SunCast is presented by Sungrow , afterall,  and they are the world’s most bankable inverter brand. But I have known many people who work at nearly all the other inverter manufacturers, and we’ve been sponsored by some of them...

Kimberlee Centera is one of the few female CEOs of a privately held, privately funded utility-scale renewable energy consulting practice. As the founder and CEO of San Diego-based TerraPro Solutions, she's earned an enviable reputation as a risk management expert for developing and financing large-scale energy projects. She and her team have financed more than 12 gigawatts of wind, solar, and ener...

Stanford Business School grads Chris Hopper and Sam Adeyemo founded Aurora Solar in 2012 with a mission to reduce solar design costs. They created software that quickly and accurately designs rooftop panels through aerial photos, eliminating the need for the installer to climb on the roof with a tape measure. And it fast-became the industry standard digital tool that every residential solar instal...

Geoff Ferrell is vice president of virtual power plants (VPP) and commercial and industrial (C&I) project business at sonnen, a German-based global energy storage provider fully owned by Royal Dutch Shell. A pioneer for intelligent lithium-based energy storage, sonnen offers customers energy storage and digital energy services like the sonnenBatterie, which optimizes residential solar power an...

Kiran Kumaraswamy is a high-caliber energy storage executive focused on the commercialization of technology — specifically, architecting the techno-economic analysis and justification of deployment of hardtech like batteries. He’s had a lot of practice, which contributed in-part to his rise to Vice President of Growth and Head of Commercial Business at Fluence, a global energy storage technology a...