Interchange Recharged

How are residential customers shopping for solar? This week, Stephen shares his solar experience. He’ll explain how and why he made his decision — and what it tells us about the way people look for solar offerings today. Brian Sadler, the VP of project development at Revolusun, describes the residential solar sales cycle. Vikram Aggarwal, the CEO of EnergySage, talks about how installers can bette...

This week, a conversation with Joe Aamidor, an expert on smart buildings.  Over the last two years, large multinational energy firms have dumped billions of dollars into commercial energy management — acquiring companies in smart lighting, demand response, battery storage, energy billing, microgrids, smart controls and software. But there’s no one-size fits all approach to the built environme...

This week, we present an original podcast, brought to you by Wunder Capital . Katie and Becca do a lot of solar deals. They're closing tens of millions in commercial solar projects every month. Karen is an SREC trader and longtime real estate pro. She recently approached Katie and Becca with a complicated merchant solar project. The three of them worked hard to refinance the project -- and when it...

Self-flying electric airplanes are closer than you think. But how close? Andrew Beebe, managing director at Obvious Ventures, has been watching the space intently. His firm recently invested in Lilium, a startup making a vertical takeoff and landing jet.  "In the near future, this industry could vastly change how and where we all live, work and play. There are indeed threats and challeng...

Everyone is paying close attention to Judge Brett Kavanaugh. On Thursday, Trump's Supreme Court nominee will face questions from Congress about alleged sexual assaults. In most cases, Supreme Court confirmation hearings aren't made-for-television affairs. But a  new poll  out from PBS and NPR shows that 58 percent of Americans will be paying attention to this week’s confirmation hea...

This week, we take stock of the market for solar and storage.  How much solar and storage are getting built — and at what cost? We’re joined by MJ Shiao, director of Americas research for Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, for a look at the factors currently driving PV development and battery deployments. We'll answer: How have tariffs impacted pricing? How did the sudden slowdown in Chin...

This spring, electric bikes and electric scooters started showing up on the streets of a handful of major U.S. cities in droves. Where did they come from? They were put there by a new breed of Silicon Valley companies focused on creating a new "last mile" ride sharing service. The startups have spread so quickly, Uber and Lyft are now trying to get in on the action. This week,...

The clean energy industry may not have a lot of money to spend collectively on advertisements. But over the years, we've seen numerous TV ads, infographics, slogans, and all kinds of marketing campaigns from individual companies. So this week, we are going to rank some of our favorite – and least favorite – marketing efforts. We'll also debate the perennial question: do we need a "Got Milk" campai...

This week, we’ve got an investigation into the always-on vampires lurking in your home.  Actually, one vampire in particular: your DVR box. The engineers over at Sense Labs recently started opening up and testing DVR boxes. They found that power-save mode doesn’t actually do anything — it only saves about a watt of energy. Compared to smart televisions, gaming consoles or smart phones, the po...

This week, we present an original podcast, brought to you by Wunder Capital. If you’re interested in learning more about is connecting investors and installers at a record pace, read the company’s  2018 mid-year review .  Nick and Nick are good friends. They’re fellow solar geeks. They do business together. In fact, they may have cracked the commercial solar code together. Nick Kerwin is...

This week on Watt It Takes: We’ll hear from  Susan Kennedy , the CEO of Advanced Microgrid Solutions, about her transition from politics to behind-the-meter energy storage. Kennedy was an important player in California environmental politics. She influenced some of the biggest pieces of legislation that launched the state’s solar industry and cap-and-trade market. She also worked as a senior...

Ten years ago, in the summer of 2009, the U.S. House passed a landmark cap-and-trade bill. Then it died in the Senate a year later. The politics of climate have been completely frozen ever since. The rise of the Tea Party, Republican anti-Obama sentiment, and an influx of money against pro-climate candidates derailed the issue. Republicans stopped engaging — and the ones who did believe in fi...

Elon Musk recently laid out his plan for a government on Mars in one tweet : “Direct democracy by the people. Laws must be short, as there is trickery in length. Automatic expiration of rules to prevent death by bureaucracy. Any rule can be removed by 40% of people to overcome inertia. Freedom.” That got us thinking. Could we craft an ideal U.S. energy policy in less than 280 characters?  On...

Ah, the pivot. Did you know that Nokia started out as a paper mill in Finland? Or that Nintendo once made instant rice? Many of the world's leading companies start out in radically different markets. Cleantech is the same. Sales cycles are often slow, technologies don't work as planned, and customer needs are constantly evolving. In the tumultuous world of energy, companies pivot all the time...

The politics of energy independence are both deeply bipartisan and deeply partisan. Every president since Richard Nixon has declared a goal of eliminating America’s dependence on foreign sources of energy. But each President approaches independence from a very different political lens. Jimmy Carter was the first to make renewable energy a centerpiece. Ronald Reagan dismantled that strategy and ins...

On this week's Interchange podcast, we saddle up to some adult beverages in a back room at GTM's grid edge conference to discuss the biggest topics in the industry. First, to artificial intelligence and machine learning: What do we exactly mean by "distributed intelligence?" We'll examine some clear use cases. Then to utility innovation: How do power incumbents grapple with the technologies that c...

Coal has taken center stage publicly within the Trump Administration. But solar is the real innovation star behind the scenes.  This week, we're talking with Charlie Gay, the director of DOE's solar technologies office, about all the activity happening in the agency. We'll discuss the solar power plants of the future: advances in power electronics; the normalization of energy storage; new way...

Would electricity work during a zombie apocalypse? Does Elon Musk own Amazon or Uber? Are electric vehicles better for the environment? These are questions that people are asking Google — and we're going to answer them. This week on the  Interchange , what our collective search history tells us about our perception of Elon Musk, electric vehicles and zombies. Plus, we'll have the results...

Like fantasy sports? Listen to our deep decarbonization draft.  In this episode, Shayle and Stephen choose their rosters of nine technologies to decarbonize the global economy. The goal: find the best resource mix to keep global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius.  After they battle it out, listeners decide who has the best team of technologies. Vote in our Twitter poll . Here are...

This week on  The Interchange , a listener tries to convince his office building owner to install solar: "he's open to the idea, but we're struggling with the question of who pays," says Daniel from Menlo Park, California. This conundrum gets to the heart of C&I solar's complexity. We'll address the landlord-tenant split that plagues commercial solar — and the broad range of fin...

The solar industry is talking about battery storage almost as much as solar these days. On this week's  Interchange , we're addressing the shift toward storage in residential solar. Sunrun, a top installer, is at the forefront of the trend. In California, the company is adding storage to 20 percent of rooftop PV systems — and it believes other states will soon catch up.  Sunrun&nbsp...

Europe was once the world's biggest solar spender, until the region's PV market fell into a structural decline after subsidies were pulled back. Now Europe is on the upswing once again — this time, with far less government spending.  As European countries embrace competitive auctions, the Old World of solar is getting new attention. The region is expected to install 10-17 gigawatts a year thr...

Shell, the world’s sixth biggest oil and gas company, just published a future "sky" scenario that's getting a lot of attention.  That potential future: By 2050, renewables could overtake oil, gas and coal as the primary energy source; by that date, it could be “impossible” to purchase a new internal combustion car; and by 2070, there could be 10,000 carbon capture plants operating g...

Blockchain is largely untested compared to its potential. We know it’s likely transformative — we just don’t know exactly how. There are hundreds of potential applications in the electricity business. Which ones will win out? To kick off this week's show, Shayle, Scott and Stephen will examine different pathways for the technology. We'll answer: Of all the scenarios for the future of blockchain in...

Out of the 122 startups (and counting) that GTM Research is tracking in the energy-blockchain space, 22 are focused on peer-to-peer energy trading. Sharing electrons directly with peers sounds cool, but why do it in the first place? Would it help the grid? Will it be a catalyst for more distributed energy? Or is it just a novel application? In this episode of  The Interchange , we're explorin...