SunCast

Welcome back and Happy New Year, Solar Warrior! If you’re in the solar or energy storage industry, then today’s guest will be no stranger to you. I hope I do justice to making this useful and interesting, as she’s shared most of her thoughts and plans with us in a variety of forums. Abigail Ross Hopper became the first female President and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) in J...

Happy New Year, Solar Warrior! In early December, I had a chance to sit down with CPS Energy executives to discuss their latest RFP, and I was amazed by the depth of answers they provided. Not only we discussed how the RFP is shaped, but also the underlying philosophy and methodology supporting the landmark power call for the Lonestar state! As many of you are well aware, having listened to the in...

I am honored to have you joining me yet again for another foray into the world of clean and solar-powered energy. Merry Christmas, and happy almost new year to all of you who are listening during the holiday season. Ryan Simpson is the head of marketing for Trina solar North America. He and I have been fellow sales and marketing colleagues and solar warriors in the hardware side of the PV industry...

Merry Christmas to you. If you're tuning in today, it is Christmas Eve. Yes, we are still publishing because it's Thursday. I hope that you'll get a ton of value from today's story. We can keep this short and sweet because Benigno Villareal and his story speak for themselves. Many of you have likely never heard of Vive Energía unless you're doing business in Mexico. Over there, Benny and his partn...

I'm honored that you're joining us for another fantastic foray into the world of solar energy. And I'm even more honored that you're tuning in this week. Merry Christmas to all of you listening. Some of you will identify with today's guests and the problems that he solves. If you've spent any time developing large or small solar projects, you know it can be an endless string of whack-a-mole in ter...

On Thanksgiving, you might have missed our excellent interview with Solar+ Storage entrepreneur and solar pioneer Arnold Leitner. Well in that episode, which I highly recommend you revisit clicking here , we glossed over a fun fact that his company YouSolar, Inc. is among the only 13% of companies that have launched a regulated crowdfunding campaign on a website called StartEngine and raised more...

As we head into the end of the year, it's often filled with a lot of stories a lot of time traditionally spent around the table around the cocktail, happy hours with our friends reminiscing and telling tall tales. I thought it'd be fun, as we have so many stories on the solar coaster to tell some tall tales, some true tales, and as such wanted to bring back an old friend. Perhaps you were one of t...

For those of you who are up on recent episodes, perhaps you’ll recognize today’s guest, Gregg Dixon of Voltus, Inc., recently featured in episode 316. Gregg gave us a fantastic insight into the world of Demand Response, and the way that through his company Voltus, Inc. and his deep experience with a company called EnerNOC, he has learned how the grid is necessarily evolving and integrating new Dis...

If you didn’t meet today’s guest during our SunCast Weekly Roundup, Live at SPI video series, then you’re in luck because Fatima Ahmad is one of the most knowledgeable folks I know on how Congress gets informed on the climate crisis and how they can take action. Did you even know that there’s a House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis? Neither did I. And what’s more, they’ve compiled a VERY co...

Today’s entrepreneur is in rare company. I can’t recall that I’ve ever interviewed an entrepreneur who’s lost a Billion dollar contract. That story alone is worth tuning in today. But you’ll also learn how James Wagoner, and his Storage startup Joule Case, became the live events power provider for Live Nation, how he’s future-proofing consumer power needs thanks to a few failed startups and the tr...

Today's entrepreneur is going to show us how to use artificial intelligence to streamline customer acquisition. Austin Rosenbaum is the Denver-based Founder of Demand IQ, an A.I. based technology platform that promises to turbocharge your solar marketing and sales efforts. I've really enjoyed getting to know Austin since I met him on a conference panel this past summer, and it's just so clear to m...

Today's entrepreneur is no stranger to not just business in the developing world, but also bridging the gap between business development, sales, and nonprofit fundraising and growth. It's an honor to be able to introduce Allison Archambault and the work of EarthSpark International on this Giving Tuesday . Allison developed not just her career, but the organization that she's been leading now for a...

As the title might suggest today, is Giving Tuesday. But what exactly is Giving Tuesday? You can check out more at the show notes down below where we get more insight into Giving Tuesday. We first introduced Giving Tuesday, to our audience here on SunCast a year ago with Kristina Skierka , which is still a worthwhile interview to give a listen to (listen to that interview clicking here ). Today, w...

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you faithful who listen on the day that episodes are produced. My dear friend Arnold Leitner, an entrepreneur and pioneer in his own right, founded a company called SkyFuel that, as I was kicking off my career way back in 2005, was already taken on investor dollars and cranking out a really novel product in the concentrating solar photovoltaic industry. For those of...

What you’re about to hear is a recorded version of an insightful debate we hosted at SPI, ESI & NORTH AMERICA SMART ENERGY WEEK 2020 . Can energy management software alone replace batteries? This was an amazing roundtable discussion sparring back and forth between our good friends, John Powers over at Extensible Energy, Andrew Tanner at Yotta Energy, and also Jonás Villalba from Promise Energy...

Today's entrepreneur is no stranger to distributed energy, and high growth startups. Gregg Dixon has held executive marketing and sales roles in public companies in consulting, energy, petrochemical products, heck, even crayons. But nothing has captured and commanded his attention and focus, like saving customers money on their energy bills. We're going to dig into how he's helped literally thousa...

Mark Mrohs is a true solar pioneer and lifelong dedicated educator for our industry. If you missed Part 1 of this episode, I really encourage you to press pause here, and go back and listen to part 1 . I think that it would be helpful to better understand Mark’s background and trajectory. Today, Mark and I go into a lot on his theory of learning , where he sees the world of virtual reality and whe...

We're going to jump into what I expect to be a very exciting and interesting conversation with Mark Mrohs, a true solar pioneer. A couple of things as his accreditations just to set the stage, Mark was Training Director for ARCO Solar Inc, Siemens Solar, AstroPower, SunPower, SunEdison, of course, he's an instructor for Solar Energy International, and he was a Technician at Spectrolab Inc. before...

What you’re about to hear is a recorded keynote of Day 2 of our SunCast Career Summit . Clean Energy has led the job-creation efforts for the decade since the last recession. Hear from industry insiders, SEIA’s Abby Hopper, Lightsource BP’s Emilie Wangerman, GRID Alternatives’ Erika Symmonds, and Clean Energy for Biden’s Audrey Lee, Ph. D., on what roles are being hired for and where we might see...

I have really enjoyed the conversations that I've been having with Miss Emilie Wangerman, the Vice President of Business Development for Lightsource BP. Emilie has over 8 years of experience in power markets and energy policy, on both the buy-and-sell side of solar, storage, and distributed energy resources (DERs), as well as experience with generation and electric system operations and utility ra...

We're so excited to be back with you for SPI, ESI & NORTH AMERICA SMART ENERGY WEEK 2020 in its new virtual format. This is the final edition of the SunCast Weekly Roundup, presented by LG Solar, where we decided to go LIVE and catch some of the big takeaways from the first-ever Virtual Solar Power International. In today’s episode, my Co-Host Joshua Porter from SolarCoaster and I held interes...

Today’s guest is Arch Rao, Founder & CEO of Span. IO, a technology company reinventing the electrical panel to enable the rapid adoption of renewable energy.  He is an engineer and entrepreneur with expertise in research, development and commercialization of energy technologies. We’re going to not only explore how Span is advancing the very technology that supports home energy devices, bu...

Hear insights from clean-energy thought leaders like Daisy Meyer, Robert Broadwater, Gwen Yamamoto and Lavannya Pulluveetil Barrera, as they share with us their insights on week 6 sessions, as well as their experience of participating in this fully-virtual format of North America’s most popular cleantech tradeshow. We also had Brian Lynch, LG Electronic’s Director of Solar and Storage, and Kenneth...

Today’s guest is Andy Foote, a professional LinkedIn consultant. He’s spent the last decade obsessively testing multiple engagement strategies and building a large and supportive network on the largest professional networking website in the World. His podcast, Foote Notes, is an interview show featuring interesting people that he’s discovered on LinkedIn. Are there other technologies you’ve scoute...

This week we have a really interesting angle on the way that cleantech companies are lifted from the dust. Today's intrapreneur and entrepreneur is Trish Cozart, Program Manager for the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado. Now, Trish has been recommended by several people, but a special shoutout to Antenna Group for helping make this interview ha...