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The U.S. is facing a major energy challenge. AI data centers are driving electricity demand higher, grid infrastructure takes years and billions of dollars to expand, and communities need reliable power. Could microgrids and distributed energy resources help bridge the gap? In this episode of The Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague speaks with Lester...

Can you put cattle beneath solar panels without damaging the equipment or driving up project costs? Silicon Ranch set out to answer that question, and the result is what Matt Beasley, Chief Commercial Officer at Silicon Ranch, describes as the world’s first utility-scale solar PV plant specifically designed to integrate cattle grazing. In this episode...

America’s nuclear renaissance is gaining momentum, but new nuclear power plants can take around a decade to build. With electricity demand rising and the grid under pressure, what can the energy industry do now to deliver reliable, affordable power? In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague speaks with Cortney Piper, founder...

Solar and battery storage are reshaping the energy industry, but policy uncertainty, grid constraints, manufacturing challenges, and equipment reliability remain major issues. In this episode of Clean Power Hour Live, Tim Montague and John Weaver break down the latest developments in solar, energy storage, and the evolving power grid. They discuss new research showing that...

Solar EPCs face growing pressure to deliver projects on time, manage costs, secure financing, and navigate changing energy policies. So how can smaller companies grow while protecting their profitability and reputation? In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague sits down with Forrest Cohn, co-founder of Utopian Power, to discuss building a...

A 100 kW rooftop can be a meaningful source of energy savings—and a difficult project to finance. How do you make solar work for affordable housing, churches, and nonprofits? In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague sits down with Ben Underwood and Isaac Baker, founders of Massachusetts-based Resonant Energy, to discuss how...

Rising electricity demand and prolonged outages are pushing the Tennessee Valley to rethink how it builds and operates the grid. Where do solar, batteries, and community-scale microgrids fit? In episode 374 of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague welcomes Gil Hough, Executive Director of the Tennessee Solar Energy Industries Association (TenneSEIA), for a conversation following...

Solar and storage are moving into a new phase, and this week’s Clean Power Hour Live covers the technologies, policies, and market shifts shaping that transition. Tim Montague and John Weaver break down the latest developments across solar, batteries, wind, grid infrastructure, and electrification. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has signed legislation supporting virtual power...

A battery only earns its keep when it can connect to the grid and get to work. What does it take to turn better battery technology into a viable energy project? In episode 373 of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague speaks with Dr. Simon Engelke, founder of Battery Associates and Battery MBA and host...

Grid storage is growing faster than the industry expected. EVs accounted for more than 70% of global battery deployment in 2025, down from almost 80% in 2024, according to the IEA.  On this CPH Live, Tim Montague and John Weaver unpack stationary battery storage growth and follow the batteries to two places: 230 GW of...

How do you take a 365 kW commercial solar project from a customer conversation to steel in the ground? In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague goes behind the scenes of a 365 kW commercial solar project for Griffin Beverage in West Branch, Michigan, with Jordan Rhyne of Countryside Energy and Kyle...

What if your solar system could earn far more by powering AI compute than by selling electricity back to the grid?   In this episode of Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague talks with Karl Andersen, founder and CEO of Lektra, about a different approach to the growing power demands of AI. Lektra places GPU servers...

America may need more than 230 GW of new power capacity through 2030. Regulated utilities are expected to deliver only about 93 GW. So where does the rest come from? Tim Montague takes that question to Sylvia Leyva Martinez, Director of North America Utility-Scale Solar at Wood Mackenzie, on a crossover with her show Interchange...

G&W Electric’s vanadium flow + flywheel microgrid matched a full year of frequency regulation revenue in under three months  Vanadium flow batteries rarely anchor a commercial microgrid, but G&W Electric built one around a solar, battery, and flywheel system at its Bolingbrook, Illinois headquarters. John Gounaris, VP of Global Marketing, and John Pederson, Principal Staff...

Speed to power: Bala Ramamurthy of Critical Loop on cutting grid connection from years to days with modular microgrids.  Speed to power is the problem Critical Loop was built to solve. Bala Ramamurthy is the founder and CEO of Critical Loop, a California modular microgrid company that brings megawatts to industrial facilities and data centers...

Section 232 tariffs are reshaping solar module pricing across the United States. Tim Montague and co-host John Weaver sit down with returning guest Chris Lettman, a solar module supply chain and technology expert with Imperial Star Solar.  Chris explains why the new policy works as a price floor, not a simple tariff, setting a minimum...

Clean energy company culture is what separates good solar EPCs from great ones, and Mynt Systems CEO Derek Hansen has a name for how he builds it: inspire, empower, support. Company culture in the solar and storage industry gets talked about far less than it should, and this episode makes the case for why that...

Solar asset management inside a 35-year ownership model: CJ Colavito and Jay Smith of Standard Solar explain what it actually takes to own distributed generation projects for decades, from evaluating tracker and inverter reliability to redesigning inverter specs around eventual failure. In this episode of Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague sits down with CJ Colavito,...

Community microgrids saved lives during a PG&E shutoff in Humboldt County. Lisa Cohn of Microgrid Knowledge has tracked every project getting built in America right now. She tells you what separates the ones that succeed from the ones that fail, and what you need to know before entering this market. Community microgrids are among the...

Solar carport installation costs can swing by 12 cents per watt before a single panel goes up. Kyle Sinclair, CEO and co-founder of SDE (Sinclair Designs and Engineering), James Strizki, Project Manager and CFO of GenMounts and Renewable Energy Holdings, and Matt Boyce, a PE licensed in 27 states and Principal Engineer at Engineered Solutions,...

CATL unveiled its TENER Sodium energy storage system at Intersolar Europe in Munich, rated for 15,000 cycles to 70 percent state of health at room temperature. CATL frames that as a 25 to 30 year service life, and it takes only 34 modules to stand up a one gigawatt-hour site. That single specification changes how...

A single design error on a commercial solar project can cost $60,000 to $70,000 to fix. Scott Wyssling and Catherine Kelso of Wyssling Consulting explain what quality design actually looks like, why AI cannot replace a licensed engineer reviewing plans, and how battery integration really fits into commercial solar today. In this episode, Tim Montague...

Battery energy storage fire safety is one of the most urgent permitting challenges facing solar and storage developers in 2026. Mike Nicholas, Energy Storage Specialist and Fire Consultant at Hiller Companies, brings a rare perspective: he built Kern County’s entire BESS permitting program from scratch in 2019, when no national standards existed, and now travels...

A US federal court just ruled the IRS acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner on solar and wind safe harbor rules, shaking up project timelines for developers racing toward the July 4, 2026 deadline.  Meanwhile, at the Shanghai Solar Show (SNEC), energy storage claimed more floor space than solar panels for the first time,...

Solar & storage pioneers Solar Design Associates share 50 years of firsts on the Clean Power Hour. They put solar on the White House in 1979 and built the first community solar garden in America. Haskell Werlin and Steven Strong trace solar’s fall from $16 to $1 per watt, explain why the battery cost curve...